Sign of the Cross

Barnes looked at Payne, then back at Jones. ‘How did you know about the missing driver? The cops have been looking for him, asking everyone in town if we seen him.’

‘And have you?’ Jones wondered.

He shrugged, causing rolls of fat to gather at his neck. ‘They don’t know what he looks like and neither do I, so how the hell am I supposed to know if I seen him?’

Barnes had a valid point, even though his grammar — and his diet — could use some work.

Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Some people think the truck belonged to a grave robber, someone who didn’t want to be seen. How cool is that?’

‘Pretty cool,’ Jones whispered, egging him on.

‘You know, I was photographing the whole scene until the cops showed up and made me put my camera away. I was gonna complain and all, but we ain’t in America, and I figured they might have different rules over here. But I’m telling you, it was the damnedest thing.’

And pretty suspicious, Payne thought. What were the odds that a helicopter blew up in the same small town that Dr Boyd was visiting, a town with rumors about a grave robber? He had to be talking about Boyd. So he asked, ‘Are the cops still controlling the site?’

Barnes shrugged. ‘I ain’t been back since. I’ve been too busy with artwork and shit.’

Jones nodded. ‘We’ll be hitting the artwork and shit, too. But, man, we’d love to see the crash site. Can you tell us where it is?’

He pointed to the southeast, describing a few landmarks they’d pass on the way. ‘If you don’t find it, you can track me down on the east side of town. I hear there’s a two-hundred-foot well over there that shouldn’t be missed.’

Payne and Jones thanked Barnes for his information, then followed his directions to the crash site, unaware that he’d be murdered less than an hour later.

21

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II,

Milan, Italy

Boyd sat in a cafe near the center of the Galleria, a glass-domed shopping mall that housed four neo- Renaissance streets. Tourists strolled past, taking pictures of the zodiac signs that were illustrated on the tiled floor of the atrium. The symbol that got the most attention was Taurus, for local legend said it was good luck to stand on the bull’s testicles. Just not for the bull.

‘Professore?’ called a voice from behind.

Boyd froze in terror. His heart pounded in his throat until he saw it was Maria. She had gone inside the cafe to use the bathroom and had somehow vanished from his mind.

‘Professore, are you all right? You look pale.’

‘I’m fine.’ He looked around the small cafe to make sure no one was listening. ‘I’ve been giving the violence a lot of thought, yet I’ve gotten nowhere. I simply don’t understand it.’

‘Me, either,’ she admitted.

Boyd paused, taking a bite of his apricot bis-cotti. His stomach growled in appreciation. ‘What about your father? Would he be willing to help?’

‘Probably. But he’d hold it against me for the rest of my life.’ She took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions. ‘You see, he’s always viewed women as the weaker sex. So I was a big disappointment from the very beginning. He already had two sons from his previous marriage, yet I guess he wanted another. That’s one of the reasons that I moved away from Italy. To prove that I could survive on my own.’

‘Which means we won’t be calling him for help.’

She nodded. ‘Not if I have a say in the matter.’

Boyd sensed that Maria wasn’t telling him everything about her father. After all, this was a life-and-death matter, not a simple favor. But Boyd had some secrets of his own, so he wasn’t about to push her on the matter. At least not yet.

‘And you do,’ he assured her. ‘Although there aren’t many other alternatives. At least none that I can think of without any sleep.’

‘Tell me about it. The last time I was this tired I’d spent the entire night in the library.’

Maria yawned, thinking back to her days as an undergraduate when she used to pull all-nighters twice a week. She’d fill a thermos with coffee, gather all the books she needed, then dive into her research until the sun came up.

Research. The word echoed through her mind.

Research. That’s what they should be doing. Not sitting on their butts, yawning and bitching. They should be in a library, doing what they were trained to do.

‘Professore,’ she said, excited. ‘Let’s figure out what the scroll says.’

‘Shhh!’ Boyd glanced around the cafe, praying no one heard her. ‘Keep your voice down.’

‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But we have nothing better to do. Why not decipher the scroll?’

‘But how? This isn’t the type of thing I could translate from memory.’

She slid her chair closer. ‘What would you need?’

‘Privacy, for one. We’d need to find a room where I could work for several hours in peace. Second, I’d need a translation guide. A number of books have been written on early Latin. I’d need one to help me through the obscure passages.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, the three Ps. Pencils, paper, and patience. No translation is possible without them.’

Maria smiled as she reached for the check. ‘If that’s all you need, then we’re in luck. There are two schools nearby with world-class libraries.’

They caught a bus to the Universita Cattolica, hoping that it had everything Boyd needed.

Even though they lacked a college ID, Maria turned on her charms and sweet-talked the male security guard into letting them inside. Her charisma was so effective she even convinced him to unlock a private study room so they could conduct their translation in private.

Once they got settled, the two headed in different directions, searching for materials. Boyd grabbed a map and looked for the location of the library’s Latin collection while Maria sat at a computer terminal and entered EARLY LATIN. Within seconds she was staring at the name of the best books in the building. Unfortunately, when she got to the section, he was already emerging from the stacks with several books in his hands.

‘Computers,’ he laughed, ‘are a waste of time and money!’

They returned to the study room, where Boyd unveiled the bronze cylinder. He’d peeked at the scroll during their journey to Milan and realized that it was written in the same language as its brother, the language of the Roman Empire. Now he just needed time to translate it.

‘What can I do to help?’ she asked.

‘Why don’t you use your fancy-pants computer skills and research the artwork of ancient Rome? Try to locate the laughing man from Orvieto. He has to be mentioned somewhere.’

Maria went to the same terminal as before and typed ANCIENT ROMAN ART. The computer scanned the library’s resources and spat out a long list. Photographs, sketches, maps, and descriptions were available by the hundreds, all of them detailing the colorful history of the Roman Empire. Maria grabbed the first five books she found, then settled into a nearby booth.

As she opened the first book, she realized that she didn’t have a plan of attack. Sure, she could flip through page after page, hoping to stumble across a picture of the laughing man, but she knew there had to be a more efficient way to conduct her research.

Giving it some thought, she decided to look in the table of contents, hoping that her theory from the Catacombs — that the laughing man was actually a Roman leader — was accurate. To her surprise, the book classified its artwork by emperor, meaning she could flip through the book’s pictures until she reached the last leader of the Empire.

Starting with Augustus, she studied statue after statue and carving after carving, but none of them shared