The Armageddon Protocol (A Harry Bane Thriller)

by Rob Jones

  Lucia swung right onto another wide footpath, this time the Paseo Paraguay, and now they were almost driving due west. She drove the Vespa right through the middle of a formal ornamental garden and then burst out of the park and back into reality again, only this time on the Calle Felipe IV, a smart, broad road lined with the square terracotta façade of the Royal Spanish Academy, and then beyond that the east gardens of the Prado Museum.

  Lucia killed the engine and they coasted to a standstill under some trees in the Academy. “We should leave this here,” she said, parking it in the middle of a line of at least fifteen other scooters. “No one will find it here – where’s the best place to hide a tree, right?”

  He smiled. “Good idea – but how the hell are we going to get into the Prado without breaking in? It’s after midnight.”

  “This is not a problem if you are Lucia Serrano,” she said, and flashed him a sad, but mischievous smile.

  They ran into the grounds of the museum and Lucia headed straight for the biggest entrance she could see.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Harry asked. “I can probably get us in easily enough – but we need somewhere a little quieter than a main entrance.”

  “Have faith, Harry – stay here.”

  He watched her climb the steps and a few moments later a man in his thirties approached the door. The man studied her face, offered a half smile and opened the door. The two of them spoke for a minute and then Lucia waved for Harry to join her.

  “This is Miguel,” Lucia said. “We were engaged to be married last year until he cheated on me. But I forgave him because he introduced me to Pablo.”

  Miguel smiled awkwardly.

  “Good evening, Miguel,” Harry said.

  “He used to let me into the museum some nights and we would look at the art together.”

  “Look at the art?”

  Lucia looked at Harry. “He has helpfully decided to let us look at the art tonight.”

  Harry smiled. “How kind of you, Miguel.”

  Miguel didn’t look so happy. “She says she will tell my boss about our fun in the museum and show him some of the photos. I have no choice.”

  “We rarely do in life, old man,” said Harry, patting him on the shoulder and walking past him into the vast museum. When they were safely inside, he turned to Lucia. “What about the other guards?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Miguel says they will be no problem. Most of them do the same thing.”

  “Great,” he said, and pulled out his iPhone. “Let’s have a look at these coordinates again. I’m sure Pablo is leading us to something very important.”

  Lucia followed Harry as he walked quickly along the corridor. His head was bowed down as he looked at the small screen of his iPhone and the coordinates Pablo had left in the book. “We’re getting closer.”

  *

  Lucia knew she had to hurry. She couldn’t stop thinking about Pablo, and the terrible thing that had happened to him. But she knew she was strong enough to get herself through this nightmare. She might be a highly-respected scientist on the outside, but inside she wore the scars of a troubled and dangerous past, carved into her when she was young and living on the streets of Seville. She had run away from home when she was still young, leaving her abusive and alcoholic father. He was a failed entrepreneur-turned-embezzler who drank himself to death with nothing but the memory of his failed marriage and the sunset view of the Gulf of Cadiz for company.

  Life on the streets had been tough. The city was ancient, inhabited since Phoenician times three thousand years ago. It was also sublimely beautiful with examples of Moorish and Gothic architecture and everything in between. But Lucia Serrano knew a different city from the one that amazed the legions of tourists coming every year to see the cathedral and the Alcázar.

  Her Seville life was in the other half, the half made of the back alleys and seasonal sex workers flocking in like swallows from Brazil and north Africa. The city tried hard to hide its dark side, its sex clubs and crimes zones, crawling with preying pickpockets and abused chica.

  In time she herself almost turned to this, but there was a difference between Lucia and the other girls, and that was her intelligence. She had always known she was different, and when she was at school she’d excelled at maths and physics to the point she quickly became the top of every class and amazed her teachers with her equation-solving abilities, which seemed almost to be intuitive in their execution. But with her genius came trouble, and her incapacity to submit to authority and follow instruction soon made her an outcast, and her grades began to drop, not climb.

  She left school with nothing, walking out before her exams, and soon after left home for life on the streets where she developed a hardened attitude to the inequalities of life that she swore she would never forget. But her life changed forever the day she sprayed graffiti on the side of the university. This was no ordinary graffiti, but the Riemann zeta function.

  Part of the Riemann Hypothesis, this was a one hundred and fifty-five year-old unprovable mathematical conjecture. Lucia thought it would be funny to spray this on the side of the Physics department – to express how unfair and degraded this world was, where a woman with her knowledge could so easily find herself eating fast food out of bins every night. But all that ended when a professor there took her under his wing, and within a few short months she had gone from back streets to universities.

  But that was then, and this was now. Now she was walking along a corridor with a man she had known in another life, in a frantic search for her lover’s mysterious research.

  Staring at his phone one last time, the tall Englishman stopped in front of a series of three large panels painted by Sandro Botticelli in the 1480s.

  “Botticelli?” Harry asked, almost of himself.

  Lucia stood beside him and sighed. “You think this is where Pablo was sending us?”

  Harry nodded. “I don’t think he was trying to send us, or anyone else, anywhere. I think he was trying to conceal something that only this mysterious Andrej Liška would be able to find. That’s why he left this trail of breadcrumbs. So yeah, this part of the museum is the right location for sure – the coordinates he encoded in the pages of the Epistola are for around here, and the only painting in here with any reference to woods or forests is this one – or all three of them, at least.”

  “They’re beautiful, but I don’t see what they could have to do with his research. What are they?”

  Before she had even finished talking, Harry had taken his phone out again and was making a Skype call.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The CEO of Bonham’s. They’re an auction house.”

  “Bonham’s?” Lucia said, taking a step back. “I know who Bonham’s are, Harry – I told you Pablo bought his painting there. They’re one of the most famous auction houses on the planet!”

  “Are they indeed?”

  “Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonham’s – are there any others?”

  He shrugged. “Means nothing to me... come on Hattie, wake up!”

  “And this Hattie will be able to help us?”

  “She knows more about art and antiquities than most experts have forgotten.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “She’s my twin sister.”

  Lucia took a step back, astonished. “You never told me you had a sister! Wait a minute – your family business is Bonham’s?”

  Harry nodded reluctantly. “Guilty as charged.”

  “But they’re one of the biggest auction houses on Earth. I saw a television program about them once. It’s the oldest in the world.”

  “Not quite. Sotherby’s beat us to it by eleven years.”

  “But your name is Bane.”

  “Bonham was my grandmother’s maiden name. The business came down to us from that part of the family.”

  “Ah...well, I’m impressed.”

  “I’m not,” Harry said bluntly, and cursed as the phone kept on r
inging. “After my father’s death, my sister took it all over. Personally I couldn’t give a damn about art. That upset Dad. He expected me to follow him into it. When I joined the army he didn’t talk to me for a year. When I left the army and joined MI6 he didn’t talk to me for two years, and when I dropped out of that and became a professional gambler he never talked to me again.”

  “What about Hattie – does she talk to you?”

  He nodded and smiled. “Yes... unfortunately.”

  “You don't get on?”

  “Yes and no – we’re twins. Come on Hattie!”

  Then Harriet Bane answered the phone. After a few moments of waiting and then a few more of muttering and cursing, he flipped the phone around and pointed it at the panels. Lucia saw a dark silhouette of a woman with messy hair on the other end of the call.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?” the woman said.

  “Of course, but I need your help.”

  The silhouette rubbed her face and sighed. “Finally doing something useful with your life?”

  “Lucia, meet my sister Harriet, Harriet meet Lucia Serrano.”

  “Oh, just get on with it, Harry. I only just got back to London after a twelve hour flight from Tokyo.”

  “Then blow us away with your greatness Hattie,” he said sarcastically. “What are these?”

  A few seconds passed while Harriet took in the grainy image on the Skype call, and then she spoke. “Botticelli. They’re the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, tempera on panel. Quite priceless of course, and an absolute masterpiece of renaissance art.”

  As his sister spoke, Harry stood back and surveyed the three large panels. Then Harriet sighed again and continued. “There are actually four, but the fourth is in a private collection.”

  “Not yours, is it?” Harry joked.

  “No,” came the humorless reply. “Can I go to bed now?”

  “Not yet, like I said – we need your help.”

  “I know that, Harry. The only time you ever call is when you need my help.”

  “Not this again.”

  “What trouble are you in this time?”

  “We don’t know. We were left a clue by a dead man to come and see this painting.” Harry explained the situation to his sister, including the strange Latin clues Pablo had left behind in the Epistola.

  “So what does any of this mean?” Harriet asked, her voice thin now as the signal cracked up a little.

  Harry sighed. “Search me.”

  “Maybe the clue is an anagram of Botticelli or something?” Lucia said.

  Harriet sighed. She sounded weary. “If this Pablo was hiding something as dangerous as you suggest, do you really think he would protect its location with a simple anagram?”

  Lucia looked offended. “Of course not – he wasn’t stupid.”

  Harry swept his hair back and took a deep breath. “Right. So we know it’s going to be more complicated than that. This isn’t a childish game – but why direct us to this painting?” He stepped back and stared at the large panels from a different perspective. “I’m stuck and it looks like I’m really going to need your help, sis.”

  “Fine,” Harriet said, checking her watch. “Then let’s get on with it and stop pratting about.”

  TWELVE

  “So start from the beginning,” Harry said. He propped his phone up so Harriet was able to see the two of them and also the paintings. “What are these panels about?”

  “They were commissioned,” Harriet began wearily, “like most art in those days, by a wealthy family, and painted around 1483, or so we think.”

  “Perhaps 1483 has something to do with it – another numeric code?” Lucia said.

  Harry shook his head. “I doubt he would go to all this trouble for that to be the end result. He could have concealed that number anywhere. No, there has to be another reason why he referred specifically to this painting.”

  Lucia opened the little book and stared at the highlighted sentence once again - Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis. “You will find more in the woods than in the books.”

  “What’s that?” Harriet said.

  “It’s what I told you about – a Latin text Pablo highlighted in the Epistola. Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis – it means believe me, you will find more in the woods than in the books.”

  “I now what it means, Harry. I learned Latin too. He was clearly referring to these Botticelli panels – they are set amost entirely in the woods – about a story set in the woods and this clue clearly tells us we will find more in the woods than in the books.”

  “But I just can’t work out what he’s getting at,” Harry said, and looked up and down the large space of Room 56B. “This must be the painting – I can’t see any other paintings of woodlands.”

  “Hmmm, Nastagio degli Onesti was a knight, originally from Ravenna...” Harriet said, thinking aloud.

  “Is this some religious thing?” Lucia said.

  Harriet shook her head. “Hardly, this artwork is pagan. It’s derived from Boccaccio’s Decameron, a series of novellas about a group of young men and women hiding in an isolated villa in the hills outside Florence. They were trying to escape the Black Death which was ravaging the country at that time.”

  Lucia looked at Harry, concerned. “The Black Death? You think this has something to do with that?”

  “She said it, not me.”

  “I’m not saying anything,” Harriet said. “Just what this painting is about – the fifth story of the ninth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron, which in turn was heavily influenced by Dante’s Inferno. These paintings were ordered by Lorenzo de’ Medici who intended them to be a wedding gift. As you can see, each panel is set in thick woods – the first here featuring the lovesick degli Onesti, rejected in love by his fiancée, wandering through the forest when a beautiful young woman runs across his path and is savaged by the hunting dogs of this knight here.” She pointed to a knight on a horse at the right of one of the panels. He was wielding a sword as the naked woman was pulled to the ground by his dog.

  Lucia looked horrified. “This is terrible.”

  “No, the second panel is terrible,” Harriet said coolly.

  Harry and Lucia looked up at the next painting to see the woman on the ground, and the knight standing above her, cutting her back open, and searching for her heart.

  “He feeds the heart to his dogs – look here.”

  “I had no idea that...”

  Harriet smiled. “That such ideas existed in the renaissance? It’s a common misconception that the era was purely about enlightenment and progress, but the very essence of the renaissance – the rebirth of classical ideas from antiquity – was always going to raise the subjects of paganism and humanism, and they manifested themselves in all quarters of renaissance art and philosophy, including many of the great masterpieces which often reflected pagan concepts such as the works of Epicurus. This went on until the counter-reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, a powerful religious revival that reimposed a Catholic orthodoxy and declared many of these other thinkers as heretics.”

  “Which is exactly what I was going to say,” Harry said with a sideways glance at Lucia.

  “Sounds wonderful,” Lucia said quietly. “I’m glad I’m a numbers girl...”

  Harriet smiled. “History is written by the victors, and it’s here in this second panel that degli Onesti finally understands what he is witnessing – a curse made manifest – a woman hunted by phantoms.”

  “Dreadful,” Harry said, turning to Lucia and offering her an apologetic smile. “Now you know why I joined the army.”

  Lucia returned the smile and turned to the third panel as Harriet talked them through it once again. She was looking at a harmless picnic, again in the woods – Pablo’s woods – a long table covered in a white cloth and surrounded by revellers – or were they? There in the foreground things darkene
d yet again. Ugolini was there again, and now the woman was being killed – a second time – slashed and beaten by her dead lover.

  “Notice,” Harriet continued with pride, “that despite the hell unfolding in the foreground, the background – the woods – are still untouched by it all – they are pure and natural.”

  “It always comes back to the woods,” Lucia said, staring at the monstrous depiction in front of her. She thought Botticelli was all about the Birth of Venus, the beautiful painting of the Roman Goddess of love emerging naked from the sea in a shining scallop shell, not curses, ghouls and nude women running form the plague and hunted though desolate woodland by phantom killers.

  “The woods are a constant in all of the panels,” Harry said, fixated by the image in front of them.

  Lucia reached out to touch the painting but Harry stopped her. “Might be alarmed,” he said.

  She pulled her hand away. “I didn’t realise Botticelli had such a vivid imagination.”

  Harriet laughed. “This? Blame this on Boccaccio and the Decameron, as I said. He was one of the humanists we just talked about. He fled from Florence to escape the Black Death, the plague... and he set his Decameron in the woods... I’m getting a coffee – won’t be two ticks.”

  “Coffee?” Harry said. “Are you kidding me?”

  Harriet pushed back from her desk. “It’s my fuel. Take it or leave it.”

  “Come on, Pablo!” Lucia said. “What were you trying to say?”

  The two of them stared at the panels to find meaning in the images – searching in the trees for anything that might link all this together – a clue – a hidden meaning – anything at all.