surfaced. I pulled my skates off and plunged in. Honestly, I don't know what happened next-the water was so cold I was in shock. But the boys had come over and they pulled me out. I fought them until I was black and blue, two of them held my arms while a third sat on my chest and said, 'Don't be stupid, kid' over and over like it was a nursery rhyme. Still…'
Beside him, she stirred, as if the tragedy had made her heart beat so fast she couldn't stay still.
'I relive that moment over and over,' he said, 'and I can't help thinking that if they hadn't pulled me out I could have saved him.'
'You know that's not true.' She rose on one elbow, stared down at him, her eyes spangled. 'Bravo, you know it's not. You said yourself that you were in shock. And your brother had his skates on-the weight must have pulled him straight down. There was no chance.'
'No chance, right…' His voice died away into the lapping of the water against the side of the hotel.
'Oh, Bravo,' she whispered, 'this is how you lost your faith, isn't it?'
'He was my younger brother. I was supposed to take care of him.'
She shook her head. 'You were only fifteen.'
'Old enough.'
'Old enough for what?'
'It all seems so stupid and self-centered now. I was never going to win over a girl older than I was by three years.'
'How could you know that then? Your hormones were running wild.'
He stared up at her. 'Do you believe that? Really?'
'Yes.' She put her hand on his chest, then she drew back, abruptly breathless at the fierceness of his racing heart. 'Really.'
Gradually the night enfolded them, and though the spangles continued their mysterious journey across the walls and ceiling, they slept, entwined.
Chapter 15
The pale morning light woke them, or perhaps it was the musical sounds of the boatmen's raised voices, ringing like church bells over the water. Looking out the window, Bravo could see that the canal was full of activity-boats, ferries and the like, the daily traffic of the medieval city. Sky and lagoon knitted into one seamless whole, the water everywhere, moving, endless.
Jenny joined him, and they stood for a moment gazing out at the vaporous morning through which the palazzi's rich colors-ocher, umber, burnt sienna and rose-pulsed like an earthbound sun.
Showered and dressed, they went downstairs. They were grateful to see that Berio hadn't yet made his appearance, and they went quickly out of the hotel, into the picturesque piazetta lined with shops still shuttered. He took her to a small cafe on a tiny side street. It was dark and gloomy inside, as if time had collected in the low rafters. He chose a table near one of the small wood-framed windows that looked out onto a canal.
While they waited for their breakfast to arrive, he opened the newspaper he'd bought and, as was his habit, scanned it.
All at once he looked up. 'It's official. The pope has the flu.'
'If they've gone public, his illness has grown near-terminal,' Jenny said. 'The Vatican cabal will be putting ever more pressure on the Knights.'
'Not to mention global resources and influence.' He folded the paper and looked at her. 'We're running out of time, Jenny.'
She nodded grimly. 'We've got to get you to the cache before the Knights can find it.'
Pushing the paper away, he handed her the Michelin guide to Venice and told her to turn to a certain page. Venice was divided into seven sestieri, or districts, each one with its own character. She opened the guide book to I Mendicoli, an outer section of the Dorsoduro district, a working-class section little frequented by tourists. I Mendicoli meant 'the beggars': its original inhabitants-fishermen and artisans-were extremely poor.
As she read, Bravo took out the coin he'd found in the underwater safe in St. Malo. He looked at it front and back, held it on edge, ran his thumb along the ridged edge, smiling. Again, he thought of the system of cryptography his father had taught him and was immensely grateful both for the lessons and his studiousness.
Jenny looked at him inquiringly. 'What should I be looking for?'
'Turn the page,' he instructed.
At once, she came upon a photo of the Church of l'Angelo Nicolo`. Just below was a detail of a painting: San Nicolo` dei Mendicoli by Giambattista Tiepolo.
'This is the centerpiece of the church,' he said. 'Now look at the face on the coin.'
She did. It was a copy of the centerpiece, the face of San Nicolo`.
Bravo turned the coin over, showed her the letters on its obverse: Mh Euah Poqchaq Ntceo.
His sly smile turned into a grin. 'At first, I thought this coin was old, but then I saw these.'
Their breakfast came and they ate ravenously, clearing the dishes away as quickly as they could.
Bravo wrote the nonsense words onto a scrap of paper. On the line below, he wrote a simple equation: 54 -42=8.
'There are fifty-four ridges on the edge of this coin,' he told her. 'There are, as you know, twenty-one letters in the ancient Latin alphabet. Double that, you get forty-two.' He pointed to the first letter of the phrase. 'My father started out using the code Caesar devised, moving each letter of the original message by four to encrypt it, so alpha becomes delta and so on.'
'That's a pretty easy code to break,' she said.
He nodded. 'That's where the equation comes in. Only the first letter is substituted this way. From then on, eight is the key.'
'So the second letter is substituted for the eighth letter in the alphabet.'
'Yes, and then we work forward. The third letter of the text uses nine, the fourth letter ten, until we reach twenty-one. Then we go back to eight, and so on.'
'So what did your father write?'
Bravo finished up the decoding, then showed her the result.
'In alms cabinet purse.' She shook her head. 'Do you know what that means?'
'I think we'll have to go to I Mendicoli to find out.' He paid the bill and they left the cafe.
With the rising of the sun, dawn had dissolved into a morning already hot and wet. By now the children were at school and the college-age art students on their way to classes in astonishing medieval buildings, sketchpads tucked neatly under their arms as they jabbered away on cell phones.
'God, it stinks,' Jenny said as they passed over a canal.
Bravo laughed. 'Ah, yes, the stench of Venice is an acquired taste.'
'Count me out.'
'Given time, you'll change your mind, I guarantee,' he said.
Several times Jenny slowed, looking around as if unsure how to proceed, even though it was Bravo who was leading the way.
'What's the matter, don't you trust me?' he said. 'You look like you're lost.'
'I have a feeling we're being followed. Normally, I'd be able to check reflections in shop windows or in cars' side mirrors, but here that's impossible. At this hour there are few shops and, of course, there are no cars. I've been trying to use the canals, but because it's in motion water is a notoriously unreliable reflective surface.'
They moved on, in the midst of a shroud of anxiety. Smells came to them of fermentation-the lees of wine- the whiff of an unseen woman's perfume, the distinct scent of the pale Istrian stone, borne aloft as if on St. Michel's gauzy wings against the deep-green water, from which emanated the ever-present rankness of decay. Even in brightest day, there was about Venice an acute sense of mystery. One was always turning a corner, hearing footfalls approaching or retreating, coming from narrow alleys into ancient campi in which could be seen clumps of elderly men speaking in hushed tones or a dark figure, furtively exiting the square.
