He nodded, put his torch down on the floor so that it illuminated that end of the platform, then walked across to Angela. Unceremoniously, he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her straight up through the open trapdoor.
Angela used her arms to lever herself completely through the opening, and shone the torch around her. The skeletonized remains of the body lay just a couple of feet away, but she ignored it completely. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for but, if her deductions had been correct, the lost source document that Marco and his cronies were seeking had to be somewhere nearby.
The sides of the steeple sloped gently towards each other, to meet at a point perhaps twenty feet above her head: it was difficult to estimate the distance exactly. She doubted if the hiding place would be that inaccessible. It was more likely to be within reach of her at that moment, somewhere on the floor or the walls nearby, simply because of the difficulty of getting to the top of the steeple. Even manoeuvring a ladder into the void would have been a virtual impossibility, and the sloping walls were unclimbable.
If the document – this scroll or codex or whatever it was – had survived, and was still hidden somewhere in the old bell tower, it had to be close by.
Angela moved the beam of the torch slowly around her in a complete circle. She was standing on what appeared to be a solid stone floor, pierced only by the open trapdoor. It seemed unlikely that there could be a cavity anywhere within it. She shifted her glance to the walls. Formed from solid timbers, with horizontal braces every few feet, they didn’t look too hopeful either. She ran the torchlight over the walls from floor level up to about eight feet, the maximum height that most men could reach, but saw nothing that looked like a box or other kind of container.
Then she stopped. Among the pinpricks of light filtering through the gaps between the tiles, she thought she’d spotted something else. A glint. Something shiny. Without altering her position, she moved the torch back in the opposite direction, the beam of light illuminating the opposite wall. As it passed over one of the vertical timbers, she spotted something reflective.
She strode over to the upright, her sense of excitement mounting. The glint she’d seen was slightly to the right of the old timber, on one of the horizontal braces about five feet off the ground. The odd thing was that there seemed to be nothing on the wood that could have reflected the torchlight. Then she saw a long split that ran along the length of the brace. She bent slightly forward to peer into the crack, and discovered that the object that had attracted her attention was actually inside the timber. That really didn’t make sense.
Angela looked at the top of the brace, and noticed two deep cuts running across it. Immediately she saw those, she guessed the reason for the wide longitudinal crack: over the years, the wood must have dried out and warped slightly. Somebody had fashioned a kind of box out of the timber, cutting off the top section and cutting out a hollow underneath it.
She took hold of the top of the brace and lifted the wood, which came away quite easily. Lying in a shallow depression underneath was something metallic. It was that which had reflected the torchlight, the metal glinting in the darkness.
Angela reached up and lifted it down. It was a metal cylinder about ten inches long and three inches in diameter, one end sealed by a cap. Originally it had been painted dark brown, presumably to match the colour of the wood, but much of the paint had flaked off.
The cylinder was too small to contain a codex or a book, but it was easily big enough for a scroll or a rolled length of parchment.
‘What is it?’ Marco asked. He had levered himself up so that his head and shoulders were inside the void, and he was watching her closely.
‘A steel cylinder,’ Angela replied. ‘Do you want me to open it?’
‘No. Give it to me.’
She walked across the floor to the trapdoor and looked down at Marco. He’d dropped back to the floor below, his hand raised up ready to receive the object. Angela passed him the metal cylinder and then lowered herself back down through the trapdoor. By the time she’d dropped the last couple of feet, Marco had already twisted off the steel cap and was examining a length of parchment, a cruel smile on his face.
‘Is that it?’
Marco nodded. ‘Yes. We’ll need your translation skills again,’ he added as he carefully rolled up the parchment and replaced it in the cylinder. ‘Get back down the stairs. You’ve just bought yourself another few hours.’
53
The trick with shadowing a car was for the driver of the pursuing vehicle to remain far enough away that the man under surveillance didn’t realize anyone was following him, while at the same time keeping so close to him that he couldn’t – deliberately or accidentally – get lost in traffic. This was why surveillance operations normally used a minimum of four vehicles, including at least one powerful motorcycle able to keep up with any car, and whose rider could cut through even the heaviest traffic. And all these vehicles would swap positions at frequent and irregular intervals so that the target would never be able to see one particular vehicle in his mirrors for long enough to register it.
Bronson, of course, was by himself, but the good news was that all he now had to do was keep his target in sight and avoid being spotted himself, a comparatively easy task in the open waters of the Laguna Veneta. There wasn’t enough boat traffic for him to lose sight of the vessel, and Bronson knew that if it vanished behind an island and didn’t reappear, it would have reached its destination. And that was what he was interested in, nothing else. Following the boat was simply a means to an end.
Once they’d cleared the quite heavy water traffic to the south of the island of Giudecca, the two men in the blue powerboat appeared to focus on the water ahead of them. But still Bronson was cautious and, once he’d established the direction the other boat seemed to be heading, he changed his own course slightly so that he was following a parallel course and heading more towards the centre of the Venetian lagoon.
Under other circumstances it would have been very pleasant, sitting in the powerboat in the bright sunshine, steering the vessel across the blue waters of the lagoon, the area dotted by picturesque islands, some of which had tall and elegant houses standing on them, others with low buildings, some quite dilapidated, while still other islands appeared deserted. Behind him, the bulk of the city dominated the northern end of the lagoon. In the clear afternoon light, over to the north-west, due to one of those freak atmospheric conditions that occasionally occur, he could quite clearly see the impressive snow-capped Dolomite mountains, looking as if they were only about ten miles away, though in fact they were actually about a hundred miles distant.
But Bronson was in no mood to appreciate the aesthetics of the situation. All his attention was focused on the blue powerboat that was still heading south-west, towards the islands that lay near the Italian mainland. The number of other boats heading in the same direction had diminished considerably the further away they’d travelled from Venice, and now there were perhaps only a dozen or so craft within about half a mile of Bronson’s boat.
As the other vessels moved away, he began to worry that the men he was following would become suspicious of him. He couldn’t afford to let this happen, so when another three boats swung west and out of his sight, he realized he was going have to do something.
Easing back the throttle slightly, he picked up the chart of the Laguna Veneta and studied it for a few moments. He was getting close to the southern end of the lagoon, and he knew that the men he was pursuing couldn’t go very much further. He looked ahead at the blue boat, which now seemed to be heading towards a loose group of small islands, quite well separated from each other.
Over to his right was a very small island, only about fifty yards across, which appeared to be uninhabited – or at least, he could see no sign of any buildings or other structures on it – but which looked as if it could provide a reasonable view of the island group towards which the other boat was heading. Making a decision, he eased back still further on the throttle and turned the wheel to the right. The boat heeled over as it changed direction, and Bronson aimed it towards a gently sloping muddy mound, fringed with bushes and a handful of trees, where it looked as if he could beach the boat safely.
A few moments later, he felt the fibreglass hull make contact with the seabed in the shallow water.
