“He should never have done so.” Vertutti’s voice was low and angry. “Knowledge of this matter is restricted to only a few of the most trusted and reliable senior Vatican officials. What did he tell you?”
“Not a great deal,” Mandino replied, his tone now conciliatory. “He simply explained that the Church was seeking a document lost for centuries, an ancient text that must never be allowed to fall into the hands of anyone outside the Vatican.”
“That was all?” Vertutti asked.
“More or less, yes.”
Vertutti felt a surge of relief. If that genuinely was all the information his predecessor had divulged, then little real damage had been done. The Vitalian Codex was certainly the darkest of all the multitude of secrets hidden in the Apostolic Penitentiary and it seemed that for now this particular secret was safe. But the crux of the matter was whether he trusted Gregori Mandino enough to believe him.
“We’ve established you know about the Codex. But what I still don’t know is why you called me. Do you have some information? Has something happened?”
Mandino appeared to ignore the question. “All in good time, Eminence. You’re obviously not aware that a small group of my people has been constantly watching for the publication of any of the significant words and phrases contained within the Codex. This is in accordance with the written instructions given to us by your dicastery more than a hundred years ago.
“We have monitoring systems in all the obvious places, but since the arrival of the Internet, we’ve also focused on dead language translation sites, both the online programs and those supplying more professional services. With the agreement of your predecessor, we set up a small office here in Rome, ostensibly charged with the identification, recovery and study of ancient texts. Under the guise of scholarly research, we requested all Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Coptic and Aramaic translators we were able to identify to advise us whenever they received passages that contained the target words, and almost all of them agreed.
“We’ve also approached the online programs, and most of these have been easier—it’s amazing what cooperation you get if people think you work for the Pope. We’ve simply supplied the same word list for each language service, and in every case the Web site owners have agreed to notify us whenever anyone requests a translation that fits the parameters. Most of the sites have automatic systems that send us e-mails containing the word or words, and any other information they have about the person making the request. This sometimes includes their name and e-mail, but we always get their IP address.”
“Which is what?” Vertutti asked.
“It’s a set of numbers that identify a location on the Internet. We can use it to find the person’s address, or at least the address of the computer they used. Obviously if an inquiry comes from an Internet café there’s no easy way of identifying the person who made it.”
“Is all this relevant?”
“Yes, just bear with me. We’ve cast our net wide and we’ve specified a huge number of words to ensure that nothing gets past us. We also have programs in place that scan the e-mails we receive and identify the most likely matches. They’re known as syntax checkers. Until last week, no expression scored more than forty-two percent.
“And then two days ago we received this.” He reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a single sheet of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to Vertutti. “The syntax checkers rated it at seventy-three to seventy-six percent, almost double the highest score we’d seen previously.”
Vertutti looked down at the page in front of him. On it, typed in capital letters, were three words in Latin:
HIC VANIDICI LATITANT
5
I
“And this came from where, exactly?” Joseph Cardinal Vertutti asked, still staring down at the paper in his hand. Below the Latin was a translation of the words into Italian.
“An online translation program on a server located in America—Arlington, Virginia, to be exact. But the inquiry originated here in Italy, at an address only a few miles outside Rome.”
“Why would they choose an American site?”
Gregori Mandino shrugged. “On the Internet, geographical locations are irrelevant. People pick whatever site they find the easiest to use or the fastest or most comprehensive.”
“And the translation? Is this what the program provided?”
“No, though it’s fairly close. The American site suggested ‘In this place or location the liars are concealed, ’ which is clumsy at best. My language specialist’s interpretation is much more elegant: ‘Here lie the liars.’ ”
“The Latin is clear enough,” Vertutti murmured.
“ ‘Hic’
is obviously ‘here,’ and I would perhaps have expected
‘vatis mendacis’
—‘false prophets’—rather than
‘vanidici,’
but why
‘latitant’?
Surely
‘occubant’
would have been more literal?”
Mandino smiled slightly and extracted two photographs. “We anticipated that question, Eminence, and you would have been right if this inscription had been found at a grave site.
‘Occubant’
—‘buried’ or ‘resting in the grave’—would have been far more likely. But this inscription isn’t on a tombstone. It’s carved on a small oblong stone that’s part of the wall above a fireplace in a six-hundred-year-old converted farmhouse in the Monti Sabini region.”
“What?” For the first time, Vertutti was shocked. “Let me see those pictures,” he instructed.
Mandino passed them over and Vertutti studied them for a few moments. One was a close-up view of the inscription, and the other several stones over a large fireplace. “Then why,” he asked, “are you so certain this has anything at all to do with the Codex?”
“I wasn’t at first, and that’s why I decided to investigate further. And that, I’m afraid, is when things went wrong.”
“You’d better explain.”
“The person who made this inquiry left their e-mail address—it’s one of the conditions of using this particular site—and that made tracing them a lot easier. We identified the house from which the request for the translation was made. It’s located a short distance off the road between Ponticelli and Scandriglia, and was bought last year by an English couple named Hampton.”
“And then what did you do?” Vertutti demanded, fearing the worst.
“I instructed my deputy to send two men to the house when we believed the owners would be away in Britain, but what we didn’t know was that Signora Hampton was still on the property. For some reason she hadn’t accompanied her husband. The men broke in and began searching for the source of the Latin phrase, and quickly located it carved into the stone above the fireplace. It had been covered in plaster that a team of builders are replacing and only part of the stone had been exposed. That section contained the inscription.
“They’d been ordered to find the Latin phrase and anything else that might be relevant, and their first task was to check the entire stone for any other inscriptions. The men began chipping away the plaster but Signora Hampton heard them, and came down to investigate. When she saw what was happening she ran away. One of the men chased her, and in a scuffle on the stairs she fell against the banister rail and broke her neck. It was a simple accident.”
This was even worse than Vertutti had expected. An innocent woman dead. “A simple accident?” he echoed. “Do you really expect me to believe that? I know the way your organization works. Are you sure she wasn’t pushed? Or even beaten to death?”
Mandino smiled coldly. “I can only repeat what I’ve been told. We’ll never know what really happened in that house, but the woman would have had to die eventually. I understand that the provisions of the Sanction are unambiguous.”
In the middle of the seventh century, Pope Vitalian had written the Codex by hand, not wishing to entrust his recommendations to even the most devoted of scribes. Down the centuries, the contents of the Codex had been known to only a handful of the most senior and trusted men in the Vatican, including the reigning pope. None had recorded any reservations about the steps Vitalian had suggested—known as the Vitalian Sanction—should any of the forbidden relics surface, but that was hardly surprising.
“Don’t you dare presume to lecture
me
about the Sanction. How do you even know about it?” Vertutti demanded, his eyes flashing with annoyance.
Mandino shrugged. “Again, from your predecessor. He told me that anyone who finds this document or has knowledge of its contents would be considered so dangerous to the Church that his or her life would be forfeit. For the good of the Church, obviously.”
“The cardinal exaggerated.” Vertutti leaned forward to emphasize the point. “This document must be recovered, and under no circumstances must it be allowed to enter the public domain. That much
is
true. The provisions of the Sanction are secret, but I can tell you that assassination is
not
one of the options suggested.”
“Really, Eminence? The Church has openly sanctioned assassinations in the past. In fact, it’s even condoned them inside the Vatican, and you know that as well as I do.”
“Rubbish. Name one single incident.”
“That’s easy. Pope Pius XI was almost certainly assassinated in 1939 to prevent him making a crucial speech condemning Fascism at a time when the papacy had decided to embrace it. It was no surprise when his successor, Pius XII, openly supported the Third Reich.”
“That’s a frivolous allegation that has never been proven.”
Mandino spat back, equally angry, “Of course it hasn’t. But that’s because the Vatican has refused to allow independent investigations into events that occur inside the Holy See. But just because the Vatican refuses to acknowledge something, that does not mean it hasn’t happened or doesn’t exist.”
“Some people will try anything to besmirch the good name of the Church.” Vertutti sat back, convinced he’d scored a point. “And your hypocrisy astounds me.
You
trying to lecture
me
about morality and murder.”
“It’s not hypocritical at all, Eminence.” Again, Mandino sneered the word. “At least the
Cosa Nostra
doesn’t hide behind the trappings of religion. Just like us, the hands of the Catholic Church have been stained red with blood throughout the centuries, and still are today.”
For a few moments both men remained silent, glaring at each other across the table, then Vertutti dropped his gaze.
“This is getting us nowhere, and obviously we’ll have to work together.” He took another sip of his coffee to emphasize the change of mood. “Now, was the search by these men successful? What else did they find?”
“Nothing much,” Mandino replied calmly, as if they hadn’t, a few seconds ago, exchanged harsh words. “The same Latin text that the Hamptons found. My two men cleared all the plaster off the stone and photographed it, and made a written copy as well, but they found no other words on it.”
Vertutti shook his head. Not just a death, but a completely pointless one. “So you’re saying that the woman died for nothing.”
Mandino gave a tight smile. “Not entirely. We did find something that the Hamptons probably dismissed as unimportant. Look closely at this photograph and you’ll see it.”
Vertutti took the picture from Mandino—it was the close-up of the inscription—and stared at it for a few seconds. “I can’t see anything else,” he said.
“It isn’t another word, just eight letters: one group of two and another of three, close together, and a further group of three letters. They’re at the bottom of the inscription, and very much smaller, almost like a signature.” Mandino paused, savoring the moment. “The first two groups of letters spell ‘PO’ and ‘LDA,’ and I think we can both work out what they mean. The final three are ‘MAM,’ and we believe they stand for ‘Marcus Asinius Marcellus.’ And that, I think, is all the proof we need.”
II
They knew the house should be deserted, but even so Rogan and Alberti waited until just after ten thirty in the evening before they approached the building: it was just possible that the police might have left an officer there. Rogan walked around to the back, checking for any telltale lights shining or cars parked outside, but saw nothing. Satisfied, he and Alberti walked to the back door.
Both men were keenly aware that Mandino and his deputy Carlotti were extremely unhappy with them because of the death of the woman and, though the orders Carlotti had given them didn’t make a lot of sense, they were determined to carry them out perfectly.
Alberti produced a collapsible jimmy from his pocket, inserted the tip between the door and the jamb and levered gently. With a slight splintering sound, the screws holding the lock in place pulled easily out of the wood, just as they’d done the previous evening, and the door swung open.
Leaving Alberti to replace the lock—they’d leave by the front door, as before—Rogan walked through the house to the staircase, lighting his way with a pencil flashlight, and ascended to the first floor. He wasn’t sure exactly where he’d find what he was looking for, so he tried every room, but without success. It had to be downstairs somewhere.
It was. Four doors opened off the hall, and the third one revealed a small study. On the desk the light of the flashlight revealed a flat-panel computer monitor, keyboard and mouse, with the system unit on the floor beside it. There was also a telephone and a combined scanner and printer, plus a scatter of papers, pens, Post-it notes and the usual stuff to be found in any small office.
“Excellent,” Rogan murmured. He walked across to the window, glanced through the glass to confirm that the outside shutters were closed, then drew the curtains. Only then did he turn on the main light.
He sat down in the leather swivel chair behind the desk and switched on the computer and screen. While he waited for the machine to load the operating system, he quickly checked the papers on the desk, looking for any notes that might refer to the inscription. He found a single sheet of paper on which the three Latin words had been written, with an English translation underneath. He folded the page and put it in his pocket, then continued his search, but found nothing else.