The Medici secret

by Michael White

  The gun went off and a large hole was blasted in the middle of Giulio's forehead. 'Or how about I make it a surprise?' Candotti enquired. Pocketing the gun, he picked his way back to the car, trying to avoid splashing mud on his shoes. He was already firing up the engine as the two policemen approached. Candotti let the window down. 'Bury him in the woods,' he said, staring into the cold eyes of the blond ROS officer. Without another word, he sped off down the track, out on to the main road and back to the Most Serene Republic.

  Chapter 2

  Florence, present day By the time they reached the Medici Chapel it was late evening. All the trains from Venice had been booked out until the afternoon and so they had hired a car. What with a visit to Roberto, another trip to pick up some things from Jeffs apartment and another appointment at the police station to obtain clearance to travel to Florence, it was 4 p.m. before they had left Piazzale Roma.

  Jack Cartwright met them at the foot of the stairs leading down into the burial chamber. He shook Jeffs hand and gave Edie a contrite look. She rolled her eyes and walked straight into her uncle's old office.

  The police had returned everything they had taken away for analysis, but only one of the lab staff, Sonia Stefani, had come back from leave. The computers had been reinstalled, the files checked; everything was as it should be. In fact, it was eerily similar to the way it had been a week earlier, almost as though nothing had happened.

  Jack pointed to the ceiling. 'CCTV,' he said. 'The police recommended it and the insurers insisted upon it. Bloody intrusion if you ask me.'

  Edie shrugged. 'It's good of you to come back so early,' she said to Sonia. 'It's much appreciated by Jack and me.'

  'To be honest, I was bored out of my mind. You've been in Venice?'

  'Yes, I needed a little break,' Edie lied. 'This is my friend Jeff, and his daughter, Rose.' They all shook hands.

  'So what's been happening?' Edie asked. 'I heard about the TV report of course.' She glanced towards Jack Cartwright who was sitting in a swivel chair at Carlin Mackenzie's old desk.

  'You see these here,' Jack said, pointing at an image on his computer screen; bands of colour that looked like a soldier's ribbon bars. 'Only two days ago I obtained some brand new software that allows us to sequence a workable amount of DNA from the tiniest source. This meant I could get a much more accurate lock on the nature of the DNA we extracted from the body thought to be Cosimo. As a comparison, here are samples from four other members of the Medici family.' He punched some keys and several sets of coloured strips appeared beneath the first one.

  'You would expect matches in this region.' He moved the cursor along a stretch of coloured blocks. 'But there's nothing.' He looked up at Edie. 'The body we've been studying cannot possibly be a Medici.' 'So who the hell is it?' Jeff asked.

  'That I can't tell you. But I've discovered some interesting facts. I compared the sample with the International Hap Map.' 'The what?' Jeff asked.

  'Sorry. Since the human genome was mapped a few years back, we now have something called the International HapMap Project, a catalogue of SNPs.' 'Which are?'

  'Single nucleotide polymorphisms,' Edie interrupted. 'Tiny amounts of human DNA that vary most commonly from one individual to another; the bits of the genome that contribute to a person having, I don't know, blue eyes, say. Or a hairy back.' 'Or a nose like my mum's,' Rose interjected. Jeff put an arm around her shoulder.

  'Whatever,' Cartwright said. 'The point is, I was able to compare the DNA from this body with over three million SNPs in the catalogue and I found that the corpse is that of a man who was born in Scandinavia. As far as we know, Cosimo de' Medici never went within a thousand miles of Scandinavia, ergo the body is definitely not Cosimo's. I suggest it is probably the body of a court servant or a slave.' 'And what about the woman?' Jeff said.

  Jack stood up suddenly. 'Are you two ever going to tell me what the hell's going on?' Edie swallowed. 'What makes you…?'

  'Edie, why have you rushed back here? How come Jeff is so curious about everything all of a sudden?' He took a deep breath. 'I do read the papers, you know. Four deaths in fewer days. A famous visconte shot, a man who happens to be a friend of yours, Jeff.'

  'I'm sorry, Jack,' Edie said. 'It wasn't my plan to keep you in the dark.' She noticed Rose's eyes getting bigger by the minute. 'Nor you,' Jeff said to his daughter.

  Edie gave Cartwright the bare bones of the story, leaving out the critical information they had gleaned from the clues.

  'And obviously you found something at La Pieta that brought you back here?' Jack said when she had finished. Edie nodded. 'And, clearly, you haven't heard the latest.' 'What do you mean?'

  Cartwright paused for a moment, savouring the dramatic reaction his remark had produced. 'The suspected killer has escaped from police custody.' 'What!' Jeff and Edie snapped in unison.

  'Only made public this evening, just before you arrived in fact. No trace of him.' 'Dad?' Rose asked querulously.

  'Wait a moment, darling,' Jeff said. 'It's all right.' 'What exactly did you find at La Pieta?' Jack Cartwright enquired, grim-faced. 'There was a fresco.' 'I know. The place is full of bloody frescos!'

  'There was an image of this chapel. And some writing: SOTTO 400, 1000.' 'What's that supposed to mean?' ' "Under" in Latin,' Edie said. 'I know that,' Jack muttered. 'That's it. I've no idea what the rest means.' Cartwright turned to Jeff. 'And you?'

  'I thought it might be a combination or a number code, but…'

  'You've obviously been tangled up with this for too long,' Jack said. 'You can't see the wood for the trees. Why mix Latin with modern numbers? 400, 1000? Must be telling you something. Change the 400 and the 1000 to the Roman system and what do you have? CD, M.' 'CD,M…' ' C-o-s-i-m-o D-e M-e-d-i-c-i?'

  Jeff and Edie looked at Cartwright as if he had just revealed to them the meaning of life. 'Brilliant, Jack.' Edie broke into a slow smile.

  'Under Cosimo de' Medici' Jeff said. 'Hate to spoil the party, but haven't we just come full circle? The artefact you found the night Professor Mackenzie was killed. That was "under" Cosimo de' Medici.' 'Except it wasn't Cosimo.' Jack retorted. 'Oh for Christ's sake!' Edie exclaimed. 'This is ridiculous!'

  'No, no – hold on, hold on.' Jeff perched himself on the edge of a desk and stared at the floor. 'The other body, the woman. You've been assuming that was Contessina de' Medici, right? But the artefact was under the body posing as Cosimo. Maybe whatever the clue from La Pieta is leading us to is under the other body.' 'What makes you think that?'

  'Well,' Jeff replied. 'CD, M might stand for Cosimo de' Medici, but it could just as well mean Contessina de' Medici, couldn't it?' It took them half an hour to remove the body from the alcove, a nerve-racking procedure requiring patience and a great deal of experience to avoid ending up with a pile of powdered bone and rags on the laboratory floor. Edie and Jack transferred the body of the woman from its resting place on to a trolley which Rose had helped prepare with Sonia. She didn't want to be left out of anything any more. And Jeff calculated that ultimately, this was better than packing her off at every opportunity. She had faced the most terrible adversity and had shown herself to be a courageous and resilient young woman. He found himself watching her, admiring her as she worked. He was feeling distinctly proud.

  The two palaeopathologists had donned gowns and latex gloves and prepared to begin their investigations. Edie positioned a powerful light close to the trolley while Jack adjusted a loupe in his left eye. Neither spoke. Jeff noticed for the first time the blinking red light of the CCTV camera in the lab and thought what odd footage it would be recording.

  'The body is in pretty much the same sort of condition as the male,' Edie noted as she inspected the clothing and a few strands of grey hair around the corpse's temples. 'Quite possibly buried at the same time.' She clipped some of the hair and placed it in a test tube which she stoppered and labelled. Cartwright dusted some fibres from the woman's dress and put these into a similar tube.

  M
uch of the woman's clothing had disintegrated, especially on her underside, leaving a layer of cloth like a sheet lain over the body. Between them they carefully removed this, placing the various pieces on a table nearby that had been covered in plastic. They then laid another sheet of clear plastic over the garments.

  The skin of the body was brown, the colour of old teak in patches under the arms and around the pelvis. In places, it had disintegrated to nothing, revealing tawny bone. 'OK,' Edie said. 'Let's take a look "under" the body.'

  Repeating almost precisely what the team had done little over a week earlier, Jack pivoted the body on to its side. They could see the shape of the spine and the ancient bone where many of the vertebrae had become exposed as the flesh and skin had disintegrated. Then Edie saw it, between the sixth and seventh rib in the space where intercostal muscles and tissue had once been. A silvery object.

  'Turn her back over,' Edie instructed and helped Jack turn the featherweight body.

  'Anything?' Jeff asked, leaning in to get a closer look. 'I think so. Jeff, could you…?' 'Sorry.' He took a step back.

  Repeating the procedure Carlin Mackenzie had followed, Edie sliced open the remains of the woman's chest. She could just see, nestled in the dried-out tissue, the edge of what looked like a small metal container. Several of the woman's ribs had turned to powder. Edie carefully eased away a bone fragment and with a soft brush she dusted the cavity, before sliding her latexed fingers into the opening.

  The room was silent – the four of them stared at the object Edie had retrieved. It was a metal box no more than two inches square with a tiny clasp along one side. She walked over to a small table and placed the object carefully on to a plastic sheet.

  It was plain. The metal appeared to be silver, or a silver alloy. It looked as new as the day it was made. Jack leaned over and adjusted his loupe, then he removed it altogether and pulled over a magnifying glass on a stand. 'There's not a mark on it,' he said. 'Can we open it?' Jeff asked.

  Edie lifted the clasp with a pair of tweezers and eased open the lid. It rolled back smoothly. Inside lay a small silver key on a bed of faded purple velvet. Along the shaft of the key were the words: GOLEM KORAB. Edie plucked it from the box and held it between latexed finger and thumb. She had just turned it over to see if anything was written on the other side, when she heard a strange voice. 'Bravo.'

  A tall man with blond spiky hair was standing halfway down the stairs into the burial chamber. They had been so engrossed none of them had heard him arrive. He was clapping slowly, the sound muffled by black leather gloves. He stopped, put his hand into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a revolver. 'It appears I've arrived at just the right moment. Now…' He stared directly at Edie. 'Please replace the key and step back from the table.' Edie didn't move. 'Very well.' He raised the gun. 'Edie!' Jeff yelled.

  The man smiled, but kept the gun fixed on them. 'Very sensible.' He was at the table in three paces, lifting the key from the box. 'Pretty, isn't it?' He slipped it into his pocket. 'Now, I'm very sorry but I am going to have to kill you anyway. My employer would not like my visit made public, and well, neither would I. Get on your knees.'

  None of them moved. He slammed the gun against the side of Jeff's face and sent him sprawling across the floor. 'Dad!' Rose cried and rushed over to his side. 'On your knees,' the gunman repeated. Jack and Edie obeyed. 'Face the wall. And you.' Trembling, Sonia followed suit. 'Now, who'd like to go first? I think the youngest, don't you?'

  Jeff acted instinctively, and made a lunge for the gunman's hand. With a strength he didn't know he possessed he head-butted the blond man and heard his nose crunch. The gun skittered across the floor. The blond man stumbled back, just managing to grasp the edge of a table, breaking his fall. But Jeff still had the momentum of rage and desperation. He punched the gunman hard in the solar plexus. With a grunt, his opponent bent double.

  Jack and Edie were both on their feet now too, and Sonia reached down to pick up the gun. He might have been outnumbered, but the blond man was no ordinary bar brawler. Blood pouring from his broken nose, he caught hold of the trolley with the body and shoved it hard towards them. It shot across the floor, collided with a computer rack on a mobile stand and slammed into a corner of the lab where two workbenches met. The mummified corpse slid diagonally off the trolley and on to the stainless steel top of the workbench, scattering beakers and racks of test tubes, and landing head-first but miraculously intact in a tangled nest of wires and paper. Knocking Rose to one side, the gunman took the stairs three at a time.

  Jeff dashed over to Rose and pulled her to him. 'You OK, sweetheart?' 'I'm fine, Dad. You're the one who's bleeding.'

  Jeffs hand went up to his head where he had been struck by the barrel of the gun.

  Sonia brought over a cold, wet cloth and dabbed gently at the wound. It was not deep but already the skin around it was starting to bruise. 'Shouldn't we call the police?' she said.

  'Shouldn't we first check that bastard isn't still here?' Edie said.

  Jeff took the gun from her and ran upstairs. But there was no sign of the gunman anywhere. After all, he had what he had come for.

  'Well, that looks like the end of our adventure,' Jack said. 'That could be just as well,' Jeff replied ruefully. 'I saw what was written on the key,' Edie said. 'GOLEM KORAB.' 'Sounds like an Indian pudding,' Sonia said.

  Rose was the only one to laugh. But then her expression became more serious. 'Hang on, Edie,' she said suddenly. 'You saw what was on one side of the key. What about the other?'

  'Unfortunately I didn't get to see that. Our friend with the peroxided hair interrupted us just as I turned it over.'

  They were silent for a moment, but then the spell was broken by Sonia. 'The CCTV cameras,' she said, her eyes wide with excitement. The others stared at her blankly.

  'You might not have had time to see the other side of the key, but they would.' 'Sonia, you're a genius,' Edie exclaimed. Removing the memory stick from the camera in the lab, Sonia slotted it into a multi-media reader connected to one of the Macs.

  'You know how to work this?' Edie asked as Sonia took over the keyboard and began tapping at some keys.

  'I've picked up a few tips from my brother. He works for a security firm in Milan. These cameras are pretty standard. They record on to these sticks and then they're wiped automatically every twenty-four hours after the original images have been stored on a hard drive. So all we need to do is fast-forward to about twenty minutes ago,' Sonia said.

  Most of it showed an empty lab. Then they saw Sonia enter and leave. A little later, Jack Cartwright came in from the corridor and stayed for an hour or so working at one of the computers. Fast-forwarding, Sonia found footage of Edie and Jack working on the body on the trolley. They watched Edie remove an object from the corpse, place it on a table, open it and take out the key. 'That's it,' Edie said. 'Go back.'

  Sonia tapped at the keyboard and the film went into reverse. She slowed it until it was tumbling back in time frame by frame. 'There,' she said.

  On the screen they could see Edie's latexed finger and thumb holding the key.

  'It's impossible,' Jeff said despondently. 'You can't make anything out.'

  'Hang on,' Sonia said, her fingers dancing over the keys. The image on the screen grew larger and shifted to the right, stopped and began to grow again. The key filled the screen, but it was blurred. 'Just need to enhance this…' A few seconds later, Sonia sat back. 'Voila!' They could just make out a faint etching at the top of the key. It was the impression of a single-storey building and a word: ANGJA. In the centre of the building were two tiny characters, M and D. ? At 7 a.m., Pisa airport was almost empty, more reminiscent of a large bus station than an international airport. Rose, wrapped up in her thick winter coat, was sipping at a polystyrene cup of weak tea Jeff had just handed her.

  'You really don't have to pack me off home, you know, Dad,' she said and ran a gloved hand along his arm, clasping his palm.

  'I'm afraid I
do, Rose. Believe me, I regret it, but we've had one too many frights.' He felt furious with himself for having put his daughter's life in danger, for ruining her trip to Italy, for exposing her to such horrors. 'I'm…' he began.

  'Dad, there's no need. It's not your fault. Look at it this way, how many girls my age get to see such action?' She laughed. 'Think of the stories I can tell… I'm joking,' she added quickly, seeing her father's face drop. He managed a tired laugh and gave her a hug.

  'So, promise,' he said holding her at arm's length, 'promise, not a word to anyone, not even to your mother… especially not to your mother.' 'Cross my heart.' They turned as Edie approached. 'All set?'

  'Yep. Passport, tickets, money,' she said with a grin at Jeff. 'At least I had all three last time I was told to check two minutes ago?'

  Edie laughed and kissed Rose on the forehead. 'We'll see you soon.'

  Rose went up on tiptoes and gave her father a kiss on the cheek. 'Ow!' 'Oh God! Sorry, Dad!'

  'No problem.' He fingered his bruised face gingerly.

  At the security check he said, 'Phone me when you get home, yes?'

  'I will, and please Dad, take care. I don't really understand what's been going on with you guys; but maybe it's time you went to the police?'

  'Yeah, maybe Rose. Maybe. But don't worry. We'll sort it all out. And you'll be back in a few months, OK?' 'Try and stop me.'

  With that she was gone. On the other side, she collected her bag and turned one last time to wave to Jeff and Edie before entering the wide corridor that led to the departure gates. Rose was sitting reading a magazine when a voice announced in Italian, and then in English, that Business Class passengers could board the BA flight to Gatwick at their convenience. She folded her magazine, slipped it into the side pocket of her bag and stood up. 'Rose,' said a voice behind her.

  She turned, startled, then smiled. 'What are you doing here?'