Sign of the Cross

tracked the murder sites with red ones, a fitting color, considering how much blood was found at each scene.

Nine pins in total, scattered all around the map. Three in Europe, two in Asia, two in North America, one in South America, and one in Africa. The only continents not covered were Australia and Antarctica, which was fine with Dial. He didn’t feel like fighting dingoes in the Outback or frostbite at the South Pole.

A ringing phone snapped him back to reality. He hustled over to his desk. ‘This is Dial.’

‘This is not,’ teased Henri Toulon.

Dial wasn’t in the mood for games, so he got right to the point. ‘Last night when I arrived in Boston, I found an interesting fact about the latest victim… He wasn’t dead yet.’

‘What? You mean he’s still alive? I heard on the — ’

‘No, Henri, he’s dead now, although that wasn’t the case when I was landing at Logan. In fact, according to 911 logs, the cops didn’t know about it until I was in America.’

Toulon paused for a moment, letting the information sink in. ‘But how can that be? We were faxed about the murder last night.’

‘That’s my point. We knew about the case before there was a case. Looks like we’ve got another taunter.’

Toulon mumbled a bunch of curse words in French, then shouted to one of his assistants in German, which illustrated why Toulon was so valuable to the department. He could speak a dozen languages, which enabled him to talk to nearly every employee at Interpol, witnesses from multiple nations, plus NCB officers from around the world.

‘Sorry about that,’ he apologized. ‘I had the fax right here on my desk, but some asshole on the late shift messed with my things again. I’m telling you, Nick, if you want me to be efficient, I need an office of my own.’

‘I’m not in the mood, Henri. Just tell me about the fax.’

‘It came from a police station in Boston, maybe ten minutes before I called your cell phone. It said another victim had been found at the baseball stadium in Boston, and they needed someone from our office to verify its link to our other cases.’

‘Do you have a name or a number or a station location?’

‘I had all of that, Nick, right on the fax. It came in on stationery.’

Dial growled softly. This was the best lead they had, and someone at his office had lost it.

‘Nick?’ Toulon said. ‘Hans is checking the fax machine right now. It stores the last fifty documents in its memory, so there’s a chance we’ll be able to print another copy. I’ll also check our phone records to find out where the fax came from. That way, you can investigate the suspicious fax machine before you leave Boston.’

Dial took a deep breath. Maybe this wouldn’t be a total disaster after all. ‘Get me that info as soon as possible. This could be the break we’ve been waiting for.’

Frankie Cione loved hanging out with Payne and Jones. He didn’t know if it was their coolness under pressure, their good-natured teasing, or the fact that they were tall. Whatever it was, Frankie knew that they were special. Not only did they go out of their way to make him feel important — something his friends and colleagues rarely did — but he got the sense that they actually liked him for who he was, not what he could do for them.

After Payne and Jones left Milan, Frankie pondered ways he could continue to help them. It took him all day to figure it out, but he realized that they had left several scraps of evidence in his possession, including photographs of the helicopter crash site and data from the car rental office. Of course Frankie had no idea where any of it was going to lead, yet the thought of helping them in any capacity was enough to give him chills.

Francesco Cione, Italian private eye. No case is too big, although I’m quite small.

Laughing to himself, Frankie realized the pictures of Orvieto were the best place to start, since Payne and Jones had left his office before they had a chance to enlarge them all.

The initial picture he examined was one that Jones had scanned into the computer. Frankie took his time searching every centimeter of the film, blowing up the image to eight times its normal size and viewing it from four different angles, before he decided it was time to move on. After clearing the file from his screen, he thumbed through the rest of the photographs and settled on the last two pictures in the roll.

At first glance there was no visible reason for his selection, though Frankie figured if Donald Barnes was as obese as Payne and Jones had claimed, then something had to motivate him to walk halfway across the plateau and take additional photographs of the wreck. And since that something didn’t jump out at him, he hoped he might find it under magnification.

By moving his mouse, Frankie was able to slide the image in any direction. That allowed him to focus on several areas of the crash site that Payne and Jones had never seen.

The first section of the photograph proved to be nothing more than a shadow created by a wisp of smoke and the rays of the summer sun. The second was a rock, partially covered in green moss, while the third turned out to be part of the rotor blade that Boyd had fractured with his toolbox. The fourth section, though, proved to be much harder for Frankie to define. So much so that he was forced to magnify it to five times its normal size, then brighten the pixels of the image before he could even hazard a guess as to its identity. After doing all that, there was little doubt in his mind as to what he was looking at, for the scene was quite horrific.

Buried in rubble at the base of the cliff was the flattened corpse of an Italian soldier. His head had been crushed by the initial impact of the avalanche, while the rest of him was mangled by the 400-foot drop that followed. Limbs pointed backward. Entrails oozed from his midsection like uncooked sausage links. Blood covered everything nearby.

‘Mamma mia!’ Frankie said to himself. ‘This be why fat man is killed! Not because he speak to my friends. He dead because he film this body!’

And he was right, too. Of course, that was nothing compared to the evidence that Frankie was about to uncover next. Evidence that would help Payne and Jones put everything together.

51

The hush that filled the room reminded Payne of his days with the MANIACs. Everyone was staring at him, waiting to be briefed. Eventually, Maria couldn’t handle it any longer.

She said, ‘Tell us what you’re talking about. We’re dying to know.’

Payne grimaced at her choice of words. ‘It’s ironic that you mentioned dying because that has a lot to do with my theory.’

And just like that they realized Payne was talking about the crucifixion. The crucifixion. That was the event that Tiberius had used to trick the masses. It had to be. Nothing else made sense. Especially if you consider the artwork in the Catacombs.

In Payne’s mind the hand-carved images of the archway weren’t there to mock the death of Christ. They were there to honor a special moment in Roman history. And the only thing that would make Christ’s death an important event to the Romans was if it wasn’t a real crucifixion. It had to be a ploy, an event staged by Tiberius to help the Empire get a stranglehold on the new religion and the flood of donations that was bound to follow.

‘For the good of all things Roman, we shall begin at once, using the Nazarene as our tool, the one we have chosen as the Jewish Messiah.’

Boyd considered the theory. ‘Why are you so certain that Tiberius faked the crucifixion?’

‘Why? Because if Jesus wasn’t the Son of God, how can you explain his resurrection? Either they faked his crucifixion to make it look like he came back from the dead, or they didn’t, and Jesus is actually the Messiah. I mean, those are the two possibilities, right?’

Payne figured, without assistance from Rome, there was no way a mortal could’ve cheated death and made a triumphant return to society. Not after what they put him through — or seemed to put him through. If Jesus wasn’t the savior, the only thing that could’ve saved his life was the mercy of the Empire. However, mercy was the one thing they weren’t known for.

Maria said, ‘Not to play devil’s advocate, but wouldn’t it be impossible to fake a crucifixion in first-century Jerusalem? They’d be lacking the special effects that modern magicians have. Plus they’d be dealing with an unwilling subject.’

Jones motioned toward Payne. ‘Hey, you’re talking to an expert in that field. Jon’s been studying magic tricks