It was convenient that Brian kept clothes at Nicole’s place for his visits to Dallas. Thanks to that and a rental car, he had everything he needed to stay for a period of time. There had been one mistake he had made, he reflected, when Randall Carter asked him if he wanted to see Nicole’s car – it had been towed to a Mercedes dealership on Lemmon Avenue. Far out in a back lot sat the crushed machine, barely recognizable as the sleek convertible it had once been. He didn’t know how she’d survived. He just hoped she’d make it now.
On the third morning Brian made a decision to work on something that had been in both their minds for a long time. Without mentioning anything to Nicole’s parents he met an old friend for lunch. Eddie Simmons was a commercial real estate agent who leased upscale retail space. It was Brian’s first step in considering opening a gallery in Dallas. Close to his roots. More importantly, close to Nicole.
At three pm Nicole’s parents, her sister and Brian were back in the ICU waiting room, struggling to pass the time as people do in these situations. It was a boring, sterile place to be at best and the sounds and smells of the hospital were constant reminders that the person Brian loved was fifty feet away fighting for her life. Brian checked mail while her father catnapped. Her sister and mom read books.
Suddenly a nurse opened the door and said, “Come in, all of you. She’s awake!”
The nurse warned that she was under a lot of medication and wouldn’t likely know them. She also said they could stay only a couple of minutes. “Don’t do anything sudden,” the nurse cautioned. “Make every move slow and easy. She’s been through a terrible ordeal and it’s not over by a long shot.”
Her eyelids fluttered as Nicole’s mother ushered Brian up front to her side. Her family stood on the other. She looked at Brian and the glimmer of a smile appeared. It was faint – just a little turn of her lips, actually – but Brian knew it was there.
“Hey, baby. How are you feeling?”
Her lips opened slightly but no sounds came out. She looked at him quizzically, not understand what was happening. She tried again with the same result. Then she gave up and very slowly turned her eyes toward her parents. Her mother squeezed her hand a little but got nothing back. “We love you, Nicole,” she said as they all cried.
Her eyes squinted as she struggled to talk. “Wh…where…” she whispered.
“You’re in the hospital, Nicole. You had an accident in your car. You were pretty banged up and now you’re recovering. You’ve been here three days so far.”
Her eyes opened wide in surprise. Although she couldn’t communicate they knew she didn’t realize she’d been here that long. Her ability to comprehend that statement is a positive thing right now, Brian thought.
As they left she gave Brian a very light tap on the hand and opened her lips again. But nothing came out. A tear rolled down her cheek and she mouthed the word “love.”
There wasn’t a dry eye in the ICU waiting room after that visit.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Vatican City/Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France
The pressure of work at the Vatican allowed the Cardinal no time for decrypting the document. As days passed he spent an hour here, an hour there, making excruciatingly slow progress. Finally he had enough. The information in the ancient book could be phenomenal. What secrets did the Templars protect? He was certain he would find out if he had the time to decode it.
He received and destroyed the copy of the manuscript that had been in the Monument Club’s library in London. That tied up one loose end; he doubted any other copies existed. And not a word had been heard from Officer Messina since he had so rudely parked himself outside Conti’s office. Perhaps the man had learned just how influential the cleric was and decided he was heading down the wrong path. Perhaps he had wisely made the choice not to cross such a powerful man as I, Conti thought smugly.
Oddly, Brian Sadler hadn’t called back to arrange to get the original manuscript. Conti thought the man would have been right on this project. Perhaps the family emergency that his assistant mentioned in the call last week was ongoing. No matter. Conti had the coded pages he’d removed – the manuscript was just a diary without them. Interesting but of no real value.
It was time to finish the decryption. Dominic requested a couple of weeks off, called an old friend who was one of Italy’s wealthiest shipping magnates and arranged to use his house in quaint Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera not far from Nice. No one would be there but him and a staff of five so it was guaranteed to be quiet enough to finish his work.
He sat on the patio of the palatial residence, the azure blue of the Mediterranean Sea stretching in front of him as far as the eye could see. A massive infinity pool lay to his left; it appeared to drop directly off the end of the patio into thin air. He had spent the morning out here, decoding.
Today we find ourselves challenged. As stewards of the secrets we, the sixteen leaders of our Order, no longer can guarantee the safety of the Most Holy Relics. Since we were entrusted with their care in the year of our Lord 1129 it has been our privilege and duty to protect the location and integrity of these sacred items. And we have done so without fail. Today unrest in the land where they lie creates fear and mistrust in the hearts of the people. They now see us as their enemies and loathe us, the very ones they should trust the most.
The future of our mission is at risk. The relics themselves are at risk.
We the sixteen have voted to solicit the help of our Venetian friend the Voyager. Although not a member of our Order, he has been of assistance before. More importantly, he now has the blessing of England’s monarch. We must engage him quickly. We must move the relics. Time is short and the Voyager is our only answer. An envoy is being dispatched to Bristol tomorrow to seek his help.
Let us pray for success.
According to the diary entries preceding this encoded page, the year was 1496. Dominic Conti read the paragraphs twice, then again. On a notepad he wrote bullet points listing what he now knew.
The year is 1496.
The Templars protect something they call the Most Holy Relics.
They have been doing this since 1129.
There is unrest in the land where the relics are hidden and those people no longer trust the Templars.
The men believe their mission is in danger and want to move the relics.
They are going to enlist the help of a man from Venice they call the Voyager.
He is in Bristol.
He is a friend but not a Templar himself.
He has the blessing of England’s monarch.
He set the manuscript aside. The bullet points would require research. One was easy to deal with – Conti picked up his phone and quickly found out that Henry VII was King of England in 1496. The Venetian Voyager had Henry’s blessing – presumably for a journey.
Lunchtime was approaching. Soon someone would come around with wine. The staff maintained the house impeccably but they were like ghosts – around exactly when you needed something but invisible otherwise. He had no idea where they stayed on the property; all he knew was that he had full run of an eighteen-room mansion hanging on a cliff overlooking the sea. To some it would have been lonely – a place more for sharing with a loved one – but Conti was a priest, after all. He was accustomed to being alone and he loved the solitude.
This trip was especially nice – he’d been here four days and the decryption project was moving ahead well. Barring interruption he would finish all thirteen coded pages before he returned to Rome next week. And what things he was seeing as the code was translated! Like a best-selling novel, this was a real page-turner. He just wished he could work faster. It was a laborious, meticulous project and one had to be careful in order to get everything right the first time. He’d incorrectly translated a few symbols earlier and it cost him a lot of time. He couldn’t afford more mistakes. He had to concentrate on every symbol.
Conti glanced at his watch; it was almost 11:30 am and he knew soon one of th
e staff would appear with a cold glass of that wonderful French white he’d enjoyed last night at the casino in Monte Carlo. Dominic wore street clothes this entire trip to remain anonymous. He wasn’t identifiable as a pillar of the Roman Catholic Church any longer. Last night he had been just another Italian tourist in slacks and a sport coat having a nice meal and a brief run at the craps table in the casino before his driver returned him to the villa.
He had mentioned to the butler this morning at breakfast how much he enjoyed the wine at the casino. The man asked what particular one it was. Dominic told him and the butler said, “We will serve it today before lunch.”
Four days ago Conti would have doubted the man’s ability to make good on that promise but now he knew it would happen. Not maybe. Absolutely. Somehow these people could do about anything. If you wanted a piece of sea bass grilled exactly as in that particular five-star restaurant in Paris, they made it happen. He knew the wealthy had ways of pulling strings. Obviously they taught their staff the magic as well.
The way of life of the very rich is a good one. For me, a poor man of the cloth, I am just humbled and honored to be here.
He laughed out loud at his thought. Truth be told, he believed just the opposite. I deserve this kind of life. I could get used to this. With the help of some four hundred-year-old knights it might just happen.
The server arrived with a chilled glass of the wine he had enjoyed last night in Monaco. Dominic came out of his reverie and returned to the present – a magnificent day on the French Riviera, a glass of perfect wine and a book of secrets to decode. Life was good.
Chapter Forty
Dallas
Every day brought changes for Nicole, some more pronounced than others. She opened her eyes often and glanced around the room, apparently processing where she was and who was there.
On the morning of the fourth day she had looked at Brian and whispered, “Why?”
“Why did this happen? Is that what you’re asking?”
She didn’t move her head but her eyes locked expectantly on his. Brian couched his answer carefully; the doctor had told them not to say anything that could upset her.
“The brakes failed on your car, Nicole. That’s all we know. It wasn’t your fault.”
Nicole seemed to be thinking for a moment, then her eyes closed and she was gone again.
Brian worked on business matters and translation of the manuscript from Nicole’s apartment each morning. It helped that he was an early riser. Every morning at five, eleven am in London, he spoke with Cory Spencer. Things were going well at Bijan Rarities and Cory handled most routine matters himself.
Brian had missed Arthur Borland’s funeral and he regretted he couldn’t have been there for Carissa but she completely understood. As long as Nicole was in critical condition it was senseless to fly to London for an hour-long memorial. He had spoken to Carissa several times since he’d been in Dallas. There was no further information from the police about Arthur’s death but she was hopeful Brian’s continuing look into his activities might provide an answer.
Each morning following his call to London Brian fixed an egg and toast, grabbed a second cup of coffee and worked on the manuscript until nine am when he drove to the hospital. His materials were strewn about Nicole’s computer table and he used her Mac for translation and research.
The first morning he’d started by going through the pages to determine exactly how to begin. Unbeknownst to him, Brian was at a decided disadvantage to Dominic Cardinal Conti. The journal entries were sometimes written in Latin, sometimes in French or even in English. The latter was medieval – it looked to Brian like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – and from his single-semester attempt at French in high school he thought those words looked ancient as well. Conti, on the other hand, was fluent in Latin and had a good working knowledge of medieval French and English. It took Brian a frustratingly long time to read even one entry. The dates themselves seemed the only things easy to read. The first entry was in 1475 and the last was in 1699.
Brian saw that every so often there appeared a page with nothing but tiny symbols. He passed quickly over those – his goal now was to get an overview of the entire project. The last few pages were entries like a diary, followed by a final group of symbol-covered pages. Last of all was a sheet that looked different from the others. In a way it was like them, in other ways not. He examined it closely and then flipped back to one of the pages of symbols. This last page appeared to be an answer sheet – a decoder. It was covered with symbols that also appeared throughout the book. Next to each symbol was either a letter of the alphabet or a medieval French word. If the symbol pages were in code maybe this page was the solution.
He had started on page one but the process was far more difficult than he had anticipated. He was working from a scanned copy and some of the script was faded. Compounding the problem were the three ancient languages – a few Latin words, then an abrupt switch to medieval French or English. After an hour and half a page of translation he got a gist of what he had before him. This was a journal with chronological entries – a diary. It was interesting but there had to be more than this.
He flipped over until he came to the first full page of symbols. He used the sheet he hoped would break the code, applying it to each symbol. After he’d done a few words he stopped and translated what he had written. He saw a familiar name – Jesus. Strange, he thought. The words were part of the New Testament account of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
He stopped. What’s this all about? Who went to this much trouble to encode bible verses? And why am I suffering through decoding them? Suddenly Brian had an idea that might simplify this project a thousand-fold.
Brian quit working on the manuscript and composed an email to Jeffrey Montfort. He had a complicated request that he hoped the bookish librarian could fulfill. Brian wanted a computer program that allowed a person to enter random series of words in one of three old languages and get an English translation back. Brian explained that absent such a program it might take a year to translate the book. He wasn’t sure what it said but someone had killed to get it. He might not have a lot of time.
Brian sat in the ICU waiting room in the afternoon and checked his mail. He was pleased to see that Jeffrey was hot on the chase to solve Brian’s dilemma. The librarian would contact a friend, one of the Monument Club’s members who ran the computer sciences department at Cambridge University.
At seven the next morning Brian had finished his call to London and was seated at Nicole’s desk, the manuscript copy in front of him. He skipped the journal entries for now, hoping Jeffrey could alleviate the slow progress of translating. Instead he was working his way down the page of coded symbols, one by one. He compared every single symbol with the decoder sheet and then wrote the letter or word on a notepad. His phone rang – it was a call from London.
“Good early morning to you!” The librarian sounded exuberant and Brian hoped it was because he had good news.
“And to you, Jeffrey. What have you learned?”
“First let me say the man I contacted has impeccable credentials and has helped the British Government with some extremely sensitive computer issues. He won’t tell me specifics but I know he’s highly regarded by MI6 – you know, our version of the CIA? So secrets are old hat to this chap. I said all that to say this. I took the liberty of emailing a copy of the manuscript to him. Listen to this, Brian. Cambridge’s computers not only can do the translating for us, he took a look at the symbol pages and the decoder sheet at the end. His computer can decode those too!”
“Incredible! Great job, Jeffrey!” Brian said. He meant it. This was too good to be true. He had only a tiny spark of concern that yet another person might be privy to the manuscript’s secrets, but the man sounded legit and the time tradeoff was definitely worth the risk.
“And listen to this. The programs to make this happen already exist. He just has to tweak a couple and bam! This project will be done before you k
now it. Day after tomorrow, in fact!”
-----
Nicole’s condition was improving. It was slow, but it was progress. For the first time her primary physician gave the family an optimistic forecast – he said Nicole was on the way to recovery and upgraded her condition from critical to guarded. Up to this point Brian could tell each of the doctor’s updates had been carefully phrased. He had used terms like “she has a long way to go” and “she’s not out of the woods yet.” Today was a major shift and cause for relief among Nicole’s family and Brian.
If things continued to improve with Nicole he needed to go back to London for a few days soon. There were several routine issues that required his attention and would be better handled in person than by email or phone. He also wanted to meet the Cardinal and get the manuscript that had suddenly changed from a throwaway piece of junk to a mysterious document that was the cause of a bombing.
Brian called the Vatican number and reached Cardinal Conti’s secretary who advised the Cardinal was vacationing in the south of France but was scheduled to return next week. He left a message for the cleric to call at his convenience.
-----
On the sixth day of Nicole’s hospitalization the primary doctor removed her ventilator. Although her breathing was still labored, prolonged use of a vent can cause pneumonia or other complications, the physician advised. ICU nurses would monitor her vital signs closely. Without the help of the ventilator she took very shallow breaths, hardly enough to move her chest. Watching as she slept Brian thought several times her breathing had stopped. Each time that happened he frantically looked at a monitor by her bed to confirm things were all right.
The internist reported that Nicole’s chest and abdomen appeared bruised but otherwise good. No surgery was necessary. Her progress would be slow but she should have a full recovery in time.
Brian Sadler Archaeological Mysteries BoxSet Page 85
