The Julian Secret
Page 26
Then he had another thought: Suppose they didn't know the words had been rendered unreadable? Either way, he was determined to decipher what had been rendered illegible. As he scrambled down the slope, he was making a mental list of equipment. Hadn't Reavers insisted on being committed?
The monitors in the featureless room were, dark, their screens a row of blind cyclopean eyes. In contrast, an overlay showing a map of Rome was backlighted, a single bright dot moving slowly across the southeast corner.
Taking a specially calibrated ruler from the drawer of the steel desk, the room's sole occupant laid it beside the dot, measuring its movement for several seconds before he picked up a telephone with no dial on it.
"He's leaving now," was all he said.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Somewhere between Paris and Rome
Eurostar
At the same time
It had been a time since she had ridden on a train. Not even once during the year she had spent in the United States, where such transportation was largely scorned for any journey longer than across town. Understandable, since American trains were far slower than travel by car, while those in Europe frequently exceeded a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour.
She leaned back in the seat, comfortable even though in third class, and peered out of the window into the night. Except for the few flashes of towns that were only smears of light, the darkness concealed any real sensation of movement other than the gentle rocking of the train itself.
Comfort or not, she would not have chosen to travel by rail had convenience and speed been her only criteria. To fly, one had to present identification, something she lacked. Airport security was far stricter than that of rail terminals, despite the terrorist bombing of the, Spanish train a year ago. She needed to travel in anonymity.
That was why she was enduring the man seated next to her, some sort of electronics salesman from Milan. He had made an elaborate display of offering to pay for the cheap sandwiches and bottled-water offered-by vendors who seemed to board the train at every stop. He had made no secret (and, she suspected, little truth) in recounting the endless successes of his business, the cost of whatever motorcar he owned (she had almost dozed off and missed the marque), and the thrill and excitement of the life he lived.
He had not (and, she suspected, would not) get around to discussing the gold wedding band she guessed he was unable to remove from a pudgy finger.
A poor dye job on barely enough hair to comb over a pink scalp, a cheap, off-the-rack suit, and a cologne that could have been a weapon of mass destruction. He was so intent on her breasts as he spoke, she doubted he could recognize her face.
Antonio-that was the name he gave her, anyway clearly considered himself to be a gift to women. She considered him to be atonement for some long-forgotten sin. Still, she avoided the temptation to simply turn her back to him or, better yet, get up and move. There were no reserved seats in third class.
Bad as he was, Antonio served a useful function: A woman traveling with a man, even Antonio, was less conspicuous than one alone.
Keeping an attentive smile plastered in place, she simply tuned him out.
Another reason for traveling by rail was the opportunity to do so. She had gone from the hospital to the local rail station and been gratified to find a train due in the next few minutes, one that would take her to Lyon, where she would
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transfer to one for Paris and then directly to Rome. Pretending to read the posted schedules, she had waited until a man-purchased the ticket to Paris. As he had turned from the ticket booth, stuffing his ticket into a billfold, she had backed away and directly into his path. A Frenchman is unlikely to let such an opportunity with a pretty girl escape. While he pretended it was an accident that his hand found its way to her breast, she had helped herself to the wallet in his inside coat pocket.
A fair trade is an honest bargain. Or was it the other way around?
In other circumstances, she might have felt some modicum of guilt for the victim whose pocket she had deftly picked, but she desperately needed to get to Rome. And she could never have lifted the wallet had he not groped her. Perhaps the experience would prevent him from doing the same thing to another woman.
She doubted it. A Froggie who can keep his eyes and hands off an attractive woman is a dead Froggie.
Antonio launched into a new anecdote. Her mind was whirring with images blurred by the speed at which they appeared, somewhat like a film on fast-forward. The helicopter, hovering like a mechanical dragonfly, before exploding in a brilliant flash, the ensuing blackness. A brief moment of consciousness, being unable to-move under huge weight that seemed to crush the breath from her. A silence so intense it had a sound of its own.
The facts had come back to her, but in no particular sequence. Until she sorted them out, it seemed equally likely site had gone to Montsegur before, not after, leaving Atlanta or being in Seville. She did know what she had found in the pocket of the man who had intended to kill her, and she knew she must tell Lang.
But how?
She had lost her encoding communication device along with everything else but the clothes on her back. Some of the clothes on her back, she corrected, remembering the shredded blouse. Besides, she had no idea exactly where she could reach him, although she was certain she knew where to find him sooner or later. She could call his office and ask Sara to have Lang contact her. But if what she suspected was true, anything said over any phone connected to Lang was being monitored. She only hoped he recognized the possibility his conversations were not private.
She would simply have to follow the theory she had put together. She only hoped she got there in time.
She also hoped he would figure out he was on the wrong path. Or, as the Americans said, barking up the wrong tree. Why would anyone want to bark up a tree, right or wrong?
THIRTY-SEVEN
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Rome
The Vatican
April 28, 1944
At the same time Pius XlI was conducting a meeting of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State, Waffen SS SturinbahnfilhrerOtto Skorzeny was pretending to be just one more German taking pictures of St. Peter's Square. Even had it not been for blue eyes the color of glacial ice and the dueling scar that circled his right cheek, the ordinary Wehrmachttroops along the border of the Holy City would have shown him even more deference than the black SS uniform merited.
The rugged good looks, the soft Austrian accent did nothing to conceal an air of one who commands as though he were born to lead men into desperate ventures. One of those ventures, the rescue of Il Duce, had resulted in a notoriety that made him uncomfortable. A soldier's place was on the front lines, not the headlines.
Having his name in the papers was even more disquieting. At least he had successfully declined to allow photographs. Anonymity was like virginity: once lost, never regained.
He had had no choice in the matter. His Fuhrer had ordered him to make himself available to Herr Goebbels's press corps, and he had followed those orders as would any good soldier. Fortunately, fame was indeed fleeting and the civilian public's brief attention quickly focused elsewhere. Even now, though, months later, a number of the troops called him by name as they saluted.
With invasion of France by the Allies imminent, he had requested a command similar to the one he had had on the Eastern Front until he had been wounded in 1942. Instead, he had been summoned to Hitler's home atop the mountains of Berchtesgaden, where the Fuhrer himself had explained the present mission and its importance. Although Skorzeny would have preferred a return to combat, the Fuhrer had been very persuasive.
Today Skorzeny was reconnoitering another raid.
Through the viewfinder of the Zeiss camera, he watched the Swiss Guards. Although their medieval pikes and uniforms provided more show than protection, he knew the men were trained in the use of modern weapons and prepared to die defending their employer, the Pope.
He trained the camera on the area surrounding the obelisk. A souvenir of Rome's conquest of Egypt, it had been brought to Rome in the first century, A.D., although it had been moved to its current location only when the present St. Peter's Basilica was under construction in the sixteenth century. Its previous location and the significance of that spot was, Skorzeny understood, marked by an inset in the paving of what was now a fairly busy roadway between the southern edge of the basilica proper and the beginning of the Bernini
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colonnades. Two costumed guards were stationed here to prevent the unauthorized from entering the Vatican grounds.
If Skorzeny's information was correct, the subject of his interest was Just beyond that entrance.
If it existed. He was uncertain exactly what the enigmatic inscription on the wall at Montsegur had meant. Even when translated by the head of the Classics Department at the University of Berlin, it made little sense and had even less significance. Who cared what crimes had been alleged against the son of a Jewish carpenter two thousand years ago? Non-Jewish, he mentally corrected himself. The Nazi party had done extensive research and produced conclusive evidence that Christ was not a Jew-conclusive for any German who valued his life or liberty, anyway.
Still, who cared?
DerFuhrer, that's who. Anything dealing with religion or the occult fascinated Hitler. That, of course, was why Skorzeny was here instead of fighting the British and Americans as they battled their way up the Italian boot or helping fortify the French coast. Kidnapping the Pope was another matter. The Christian world would shriek its protest just as all of Europe had when the Fuhrer had marched into the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudeten, and then all of Czechoslovakia. And with about as much effect. In the meantime, His Holiness could be ransomed off for the greatest treasure in the world, the priceless objects of art in the Vatican. After nearly five years of war, Germany's treasury could use the infusion of cash such riches would bring.
And Hitler would have a surfeit of religious artifacts, including whatever that emperor ... Julian, the Emperor Julian, had hidden.
He let the camera fall loose to hang on the strap around his neck. The information. Intelligence provided by trained military observers was frequently misleading or downright wrong. Here, he was relying on the observations not of a soldier, not even a partisan civilian, but of Ludwig Kaas, the financial secretary to the ReverendaFabbrica, a mere clerical bureaucrat.
Of course, Kaas had more incentive than most to get his facts straight. The families of his two siblings and his aged mother, all in Germany, to be exact. No one had actually threatened them, not in so many words. But when Hitler and his inner circle had heard the rumors of excavation below the basilica, they searched the voluminous records of the Third Reich until they found someone in the Vatican, someone who might be, shall we say, subject to patriotic persuasion.
Kaas had produced the information sought: entrances, number of guards on duty at any given time, and the location of the object of German interest. The priest had not even asked why the data was requested. Perhaps he knew. More likely, he wanted to make sure he did not. Well, the good father's self-delusion of innocence wasn't going to last much longer. The priest was scheduled to give Skorzeny a tour of the area beneath the basilica tomorrow morning.
After that, there would be no reason to delay the operation.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Rome
Hotel Hassler
The present
When Lang awoke the next morning, he sat up in bed, reviewing what, if anything, he had learned the night before. The inscription on the wall had been obliterated, but by whom? Historical revisionism and political correctness were at least as old as the Caesars. An emperor's name, Julian's inscription, either could have been removed. Unless Lang could manage to read. a carving intentionally destroyed, he would never know what, if anything, Skorzeny had found or the motive for whoever had killed Don and Gurt and now had him in their homicidal sights.
But how do you read ...?
Inspiration is like a broadcast: free, but you just have to be tuned to the right station.
Hurriedly, he showered and dressed. Checking the charged status of both his own cell phone and the BlackBerry Reavers had given him, he slipped both in his pocket, counted his cash, and decided he needed more and left the room. A few minutes later, he was walking briskly toward the rail station. One of the many things Lang loved about Rome was its mix of history. A block from the station was the massive Baths of Diocletian, emperor at the end of the third century and author of the Roman equivalent of Boston's Big Dig. Except the emperor's huge public bathhouse had actually been completed in a single lifetime. Straddling both modern and ancient, a seventeenth-century building housed Rome's archaeological museum, its location forming a triangle with the baths and rail station.
Lang pulled open the museum's glass doors, entering a small lobby, and approached the ticket booth.
"Curator?" he asked.
"Five euro," the woman behind the glass said, pointing to a price list in five languages prominently displayed behind her. Lang shook his head. "No, no. I'd like to see the curator, not the museum."
"If you no want see museum," she challenged, "why you here?"
Once again, Lang became aware of how efficient the barrier of language could be. He spoke little more than memorized phrases of Italian, and her English was little better. "It's too much money,"
"May I have red wine," or "Where is the men's room?" wasn't going to be of much use.
"Can I help you, sir?"
A young man in a white shirt, tie, and neatly pressed pants had appeared
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like a genie at Lang's elbow.
''You can if you speak English," Lang said hopefully.
"Of course. What is it you wish?"
Lang grinned. "Your English is very good. Where did you learn it?"
The young man smiled back, a dazzle of white teeth. "P.S. 41 in the Bronx, where I live. I'm visiting my grandparents here, working at the museum, hoping to improve my Italian." He extended his hand. "Enrico Savelli."
Lang shook, almost blurting out a name that wasn't going to match his passport. "Joel Couch. I wanted to see the curator."
Savelli's face screwed up into a question. "He's in the field for the next few days. Might I ask why you want to see him?"
Lang thought fast. "I'm writing an article for the newspaper I work for, an article on forensics in archaeology. Stuff like being able to read old and nearly obliterated inscriptions, ancient manuscripts, stuff like that. Maybe as a fellow American you could arrange ..."
Lang had long ago observed that Americans who had nothing in common in their native country took it as a debt of honor to help their fellow citizens abroad. Read a menu you can't decipher? No problem. Give you directions to the embassy? Why don't you let me walk you there? Had your wallet lifted? Here's a few euro to get you to the American Express office. It was a positive facet of the us-against-them syndrome.
Savelli stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Wish you had called or written-",
"Actually, I'm here on vacation, just thought of finding out how one of the world's primo archaeological outfits does it. But if you can't, you can't." Lang turned as though to head for the door.
"Tell you what," Savelli said. "Curator's at Herculaneum, supervising a new dig along what was the waterfront.... You are familiar with the city?"
"Destroyed in the same eruption of Vesuvius as Pompeii, about A.D. seventy-nine."
Savelli gave that flash of a smile again, glad to be talking to a reasonably knowledgeable countryman, not one of those American tourists who view Italy as a combination Olive Garden Restaurant and Armani outlet store. "I can call. It's about a three-hour train ride to Naples and a fifty-euro cab trip to the site, if you bargain well. Ask for Dr. Rossi."
Lang did a quick calculation: It would take at least an hour to get to either of Rome's airports, and how long would he have to wait for the next flight to Naples? As is so often the case in Europe, the train was preferable to air travel.
He reached in his pocket and peeled off several bills. "For your trouble."
The mistake became instantly apparent as Savelli frowned and shook his head. "I am not the concierge at your hotel, Mr. Couch."
Lang feigned surprise. "Not for you, of course. A contribution to this museum in payment for your efforts." It was as if the sun had come out from behind storm clouds. "Grazie. A moment and I will write you a receipt."
Lang left considering a common conundrum: Where was the line between