The First Apostle

that the inscription is very old, maybe dating from as early as the first century A.D.

“He’s also looked at the shape of the stone, and again it doesn’t fit with a grave marker. He thinks it might have been part of a wall, and he suggests that in its original location there would have been one or more inscribed stones below it, and those would probably have displayed a map showing the location of whatever the inscription referred to.

“He finishes up by saying that as a curiosity the stone is interesting, but it has no intrinsic value. He guesses that when this house was being erected, the builders found the stone and decided to incorporate it in the wall as a kind of feature. And then, over the years, tastes changed and the wall was plastered over.”

“Well, I suppose that’s helpful,” Mark acknowledged, “but it doesn’t get us very much further, and we still don’t know why these ‘burglars’ have been breaking in.”

“Oh, I think we do,” Bronson said. “Whatever those three words refer to, someone, somewhere, is very concerned that they should remain hidden, otherwise why would they replaster the wall? And that person obviously knows exactly what these

‘liars’ are, and is desperate to find their hiding place. They’re after the missing bit of the inscription, the map or whatever that shows where the relics were hidden.”

“So what should we do now?” Mark asked.

“That, I think, is fairly obvious. We find the missing stone before the burglars come back.”

II

Joseph Cardinal Vertutti’s caffeine intake was rising rapidly. Yet again he’d been summoned by Mandino, and yet again they’d met in a busy pavement cafe’, this time on Piazza Cavour, not far from the Vatican. As usual, Mandino was accompanied by two young bodyguards, and this time, Vertutti hoped, he’d have some good news.

“Have your men found the rest of the stone?” he asked, more in hope than expectation.

Mandino shook his head. “No. There was a problem,” he said, but didn’t seem inclined to elaborate.

“So what now?”

“This matter is occupying more and more of my time, Cardinal, as well as incurring significant expenses. I’m aware that we’re contracted to resolve this problem on behalf of your employer, but I need to make you aware that I’m expecting these expenses to be met by you.”

“What? You’re expecting the Vatican”—Vertutti lowered his voice as he said the word—“to pay you?”

Mandino nodded. “Exactly. I anticipate our total expenses will be in the region of one hundred thousand euros. Perhaps you could make arrangements to have that sum ready to transfer to us once we’ve sorted out this matter. I’ll advise you of the account details in due course.”

“I will do no such thing,” Vertutti spluttered. “I have no access to funds of that size and, even if I had, I wouldn’t contemplate transferring a single euro to you.”

Mandino looked at him without expression. “I was rather expecting that reaction from you, Cardinal. Put simply, you’re in no position to argue. If you don’t agree to meet these modest expenses, I may decide that the interests of my organization would be better served by not destroying the relic or handing it over to you. Perhaps making our findings public would be the optimum solution. Pierro is very interested in what we’ve found so far, and he believes his academic career would be greatly enhanced if he could discover this object and submit it to scientific scrutiny. But, of course, ultimately it’s your choice.”

“I think that’s called blackmail, Mandino.”

“You can call it anything you like, Eminence, but don’t forget who you’re dealing with. My organization is incurring necessary expenses in carrying out this operation on your behalf. It seems only reasonable that you should meet them. If you decide not to, then as far as I’m concerned our contractual obligation to you is at an end, and we would then be free to do whatever we thought most appropriate with anything we manage to recover. And don’t forget that I’m no friend of the Church.

Whatever happens to this relic wouldn’t bother me.”

Vertutti glowered at him, but both men knew he had no choice, no choice at all.

“Very well,” Vertutti grated. “I’ll see if I can arrange something.”

“Excellent.” Mandino beamed. “I knew you’d see things my way eventually. I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve resolved the situation in Ponticelli.”

III

“Jeremy Goldman’s pretty sharp,” Bronson said. He was rereading the e-mail and had only just realized the significance of another of Goldman’s suggestions.

“In what way?” Mark asked.

“He spotted something else about the inscribed stone. He says that the Latin text is centered on the stone left and right, but not vertically. The words are closer to the base of the stone than they are to the top. And that could mean that the stone isn’t complete, that someone’s cut away the lower section of it. Let’s go and take a look.”

The two men walked through into the living room and stood in front of the fireplace to stare up at the stone. It was immediately obvious that Goldman was right.

“Look at this,” Bronson said. “If you know what to look for, you can clearly see the marks where someone’s chiseled off the lower part. This section of stone—the bit that has the inscription carved on it—was once part of a much larger slab, probably twice this size. So all we need do now is find the lower half, the bit that presumably contains the map or directions or whatever.”

“That could be tricky. This house is built of stone, and so’s the garage. That used to be a stable block and before that a small barn. The house is surrounded by about half an acre of garden, and most of that has rocks buried in it, some of them obviously worked stones with shaped sides and edges. Even if the stone is somewhere here, it could take a hell of a long time to find it.”

“My guess, Mark, is that if it’s here it’ll be cemented into a wall somewhere in the house, just like this one. The stone was split into two carefully—the cut edge is almost straight—and I don’t believe whoever took the time to do that would simply dump the other section.”

“So we start checking inside the house. The problem is—which wall do we start with?”

Bronson grinned at his friend. If nothing else, the search was taking both their minds off Jackie’s death. “We check them all, and we might as well begin right here with this one.”

Just more than half an hour later, the two men were again standing in the living room, looking at the stone above the fireplace. All but three of the walls in the house had already been stripped of any covering before the Hamptons purchased the property, and they’d just inspected every exposed stone in the house and found precisely nothing. That left only two rooms where they were going to have to get their hands dirty: the dining room, with two plaster-covered walls that the builders hadn’t started work on yet, and the living room itself, where about half of the fireplace wall still had the original plaster on it.

“Is this really necessary?” Mark asked, as Bronson donned a pair of overalls left by the builders and picked up a hammer and chisel.

“I think so, yes. The only way to resolve this is to find the missing half of that stone.”

“And what do we do then?”

“Until we locate the stone and decipher what’s on it, I’ve no idea,” Bronson said.

Then he turned around and studied the wall beside the fireplace. The old plaster began just to the left of the cracked lintel and extended all the way to the back wall, which had already been stripped.

He took a firm grip of the chisel, positioned the tip about three inches from the edge of the plaster, and rapped it sharply with the hammer. The chisel drove about half an inch into it, and a section of plaster fell to the floor, revealing part of the stone underneath. It looked as if stripping the wall wouldn’t take him too long.

Rogan was stiff, tired, uncomfortable, bored and pissed off. He’d slept as best he could in the car for what was left of the night after he’d got back to Monti Sabini, then driven into the town for an early-morning coffee and a couple of pastries. He’d returned to the house straight afterward and had spent the rest of the morning watching the property through a set of powerful binoculars.

He’d seen two men inside—not one, as he’d been expecting—and had watched as one of them had pulled on a pair of overalls and started chipping away at the wall of the living room. It looked as if Hampton and the other man were going to do the job for him.