‘What can we do, Chris?’ she asked. ‘I’ve known Charles Westman for years. He was the last person I would ever have suspected of being involved with any organization more dangerous than the local Rotary Club. And he turns out to be the head of a group that rivals the Mafia for its ruthlessness. If you can’t trust somebody like him, who the hell can we trust?’
‘I know. It seems completely unbelievable.’
‘So what can we do?’ she asked again. ‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life jumping at shadows, but we could end up doing that if we make this public.’
‘I suppose it all depends on how important the truth is,’ Bronson said. ‘I know your opinion of the parchment, but so far nobody else knows what you’ve found. That does provide us with a couple of options.’
‘What options?’ Angela asked, a puzzled frown on her face.
‘Well, you might not like it, but I did have one idea.’
113
Antonio Morini sat in his office at the Vatican and read again the Italian translation of a short report he had just been sent. It had been released by the British Museum in London and had been headlined ‘Early Second Century Forgery Discovered’. He’d read the text three times in Italian and had found the original English version on the Internet and had read that twice as well, and he still wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Could it be possible that the parchment that had caused so much consternation in the corridors of the Vatican when it had been stolen in 1965 had actually been a forgery all the time? Techniques for examining ancient documents had improved out of all recognition over the previous half-century. It was, he supposed, at least possible that what had been believed by the Vatican’s scholars to be a contemporary description of a trial held two thousand years ago could actually be shown using modern methods to be nothing of the sort. That was one possibility, and there was no real reason to doubt it. The second option was that the parchment was precisely what the Vatican had believed it to be all along, but for some reason the people who had it in their possession had decided to publicly renounce the truth and go along with the idea of it being a second-century fake.
And in fact, he suddenly realized, it really didn’t matter which version of the truth was actually the truth. The Vatican and Christianity were off the hook, so to speak. If anyone in the future examined the parchment again and came to the conclusion that it was the genuine article, then they would have an uphill struggle to prove their case against the authoritative analysis that would be provided by the British Museum when the full report on the relic was released in a month or two.
Morini leaned back in his chair and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, he could lock away the protocols in the safe and return to his normal duties. Hopefully he could forget the terrible doubts that had been plaguing him over the last few days. Shove them to the back of his mind and pretend they had never existed.
The Englishman hadn’t answered his phone for the last two days, and Morini hadn’t known quite what to make of that. He’d try one last time, to discuss the report that had just been released. He would need to call him off the hunt, because any other deaths now could open up the entire thing all over again.
He changed into his usual civilian clothes and left the Vatican City. He would, he thought, treat himself to an ice cream today, now that the operation had finally been terminated. It would make a pleasant change to wander the streets of Rome in a carefree manner, as opposed to the nervous tension which had been his constant companion for the previous week or so.
He headed towards his normal café, but as he turned almost the last corner, and walked down the tiny alleyway adjacent to the café, he was suddenly aware of a man approaching him quickly from behind, and he turned to see who it was.
The moment he did so, the stranger, a heavily built man with a dark complexion and black hair, slammed into him and knocked him to the ground, driving the breath from his body.
‘I warned you,’ the stranger growled. ‘If you didn’t give me Bronson, I told you I’d come after you.’
A flash of mortal terror coursed through Morini’s body as he realized who the man was.
‘You don’t understand,’ Morini said, his voice laced with terror, ‘I need to—’
‘It’s too late for that now, monsignor, far too late.’
The Spaniard leaned down — it almost looked as though he was helping the old man up — and with a single powerful blow drove the knife that he had concealed under his jacket deep into the Italian’s body, thrusting up under the ribcage and seeking out the vital organs of the upper torso. The tip of the blade ruptured Morini’s heart, and almost immediately the Italian moved no more.
‘Debt paid in full,’ Tobí murmured, then stood up, straightened his jacket and walked away without a backward glance.
Author’s note
This book is of course a novel, which means that it’s fiction. But as with all the books in this series, I always try to build my fiction on the solid ground of established fact.
The daring robbery that took place at the end of November 1965 happened exactly as I described it in this book, and my account is based upon contemporary police reports and newspaper stories about the event. Obviously, I invented the profession of the two thieves, but because of the route they used to enter the Vatican it is almost certain that they were either acrobats or at the very least had extensive climbing experience.
They took only the four items that I claim they stole, a somewhat peculiar selection of treasures in view of the priceless relics that surrounded them when they effected their entrance to the building, and it is also a proven fact that in less than twenty-four hours three of these treasures — the replica crown and the two collections of literary manuscripts — had been returned in precisely the manner I described.
I have no idea whether or not the manuscripts that were returned to the Vatican were the originals, but in my opinion the only sensible explanation for this event is that it was a robbery to order, to allow a wealthy collector to get his hands on the genuine manuscripts. At the time, the Italian police were convinced that this was the most likely motive for the theft, and made statements to the press to this effect.
And I think it is at the very least a strong possibility that the two manuscript collections that were recovered were actually very good forgeries. Common sense suggests that nobody would plot or plan such a daring robbery, which was undetected until long after the thieves had left the Vatican City, only to hand back the three most valuable objects stolen that very same day. I have not been able to find out if the two manuscript collections are currently on display anywhere in the Vatican, or if they are locked away somewhere, out of the sight of anyone who might be able to raise doubts about their authenticity, but my money’s on the latter.
The background information that I supplied about ancient parchment and ink, and modern methods and techniques for making such ancient texts readable is accurate, if somewhat simplified for the purposes of the narrative.
Again, the historical information in the book about the P2 lodge is accurate, including the details of the death of the banker Roberto Calvi, whose body was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London.
One aspect of his death that has never really been explored is the possible significance of this location, the ‘Black Friars’ being a direct reference to members of the Dominican order, who were specifically charged by the Vatican with investigating heresy. In short, with conducting the Inquisitions: the Dominicans were essentially the Pope’s personal torturers.