The First Apostle

the—”

“I know what it is, Carlotti. Which areas did they look at?”

“We don’t know, capo. Once the computer accessed the Google Earth server, we could no longer monitor its activities. The user was effectively working inside a closed system.”

“I don’t like the sound of this. Bronson’s still in the area. He’s finding out something about Roman surveying techniques, and the fact that he then went onto Google Earth might mean he’s following some kind of trail. Anything else?”

“Yes. As soon as I heard about these searches I asked one of my contacts in the Santa Marinella area to find out who’d been staying in the hotel there. He called me back a few minutes ago. There were two English guests—a man and his wife—there last night, but the hotel staff didn’t get their names because they paid the bill in cash. All the receptionist remembered was that they spent most of the evening in their room.

And they know they used the Internet because they were charged for it. They were driving a British- registered Renault Espace and checked out early this morning.”

“That confirms it, then. What did you do?”

“I tipped off one of my contacts in the Carabinieri. But it’s the last piece of information that worries me most, in view of what happened with the scroll.”

“Tell me.”

“According to one of my other contacts in the Carabinieri, this morning a Toyota Land Cruiser was hired from a garage in San Cesareo, near Rome, by a woman named Angela Lewis, who paid for two days’ hire by credit card.”

“Damn,” Mandino muttered.

“It looks like Bronson’s following the same trail as us, though I don’t understand how,” Carlotti said. “Are you sure that stone at the house hadn’t been exposed before?”

“Definitely not, but somehow he must have got hold of another copy of the diagram showing the location of the burial. And if he’s hired a jeep, he must have worked out where to start his search. Hang on a minute,” Mandino said, as another thought struck him. “The Toyota was hired in San Cesareo this morning, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Right, at least that gives us a starting point. Get the Carabinieri looking out for the Toyota.”

“Already done, capo. Anything else?”

“No. Until we find out where he’s heading, there’s nothing more we can do.”

Mandino ended the call, then dialed Rogan’s number.

“Give the phone to Pierro,” he instructed, as soon as Rogan answered.

“Pierro.”

“Mandino. Any luck with matching the diagram?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure that with time we can—”

“We don’t have time,” Mandino snapped. “I’ve just heard that Bronson has hired a jeep from a garage over to the east of Rome, and that could mean that he’s already deciphered the diagram. Where have you been looking?”

“Mainly to the north of the city, because I believe Marcellus owned estates in that area.”

“It looks to me like Bronson’s better at this than you are, Pierro, and you’re supposed to be the expert. I suggest you start looking somewhere to the east of Rome, and quickly. If he finds the tomb before we do, I will be most displeased, and you really don’t want that to happen. You know what’s at stake.”

23

I

“Anything?” Bronson asked, as Angela walked through the long grass toward him.

They’d been searching for about two hours and had found precisely nothing, apart from a handful of fired shotgun cartridges. At first they’d looked together, following a logical grid pattern, then split up in order to cover more ground.

“Sod all,” Angela replied. “I’m fed up, hungry and thirsty. I’m taking a break.”

The two of them walked back down the slope to the Toyota. Bronson opened the doors and turned on the engine, letting the welcome chill of the air-conditioning waft over them. Angela pulled out the packets of sandwiches and offered Bronson a choice.

“I’ll have the chicken salad,” he said, and ripped open the cellophane.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Angela asked, peeling apart a ham sandwich and looking with some uncertainty at the pinkish meat inside.

“Frankly, no. The dot on the diagram on the skyphos has to cover a fairly large area on the ground. If someone had invented the compass and given one to Marcellus to provide accurate bearings, it would have been a hell of a lot easier. As it is, we’re really stumbling around in the dark.”

“You’d really expect him to leave some sort of a marker so that he could find the exact location again if he needed to,” Angela said. “All these cliffs and slopes look pretty damn similar to me.”

“What kind of marker?”

“I don’t know—an arrow carved on a rock, something like that.”

“He might have done,” Bronson pointed out, “but the mark might have weathered away to nothing over the centuries.”

“That’s very encouraging. Thanks.”

“Let’s have a drink,” Bronson suggested, “and then we’ll try again.”

Three hours later they were still searching. They’d scoured the entire plateau from one side to the other. Bronson had climbed onto the upper slope of the feature and checked it out—but had found nothing—while Angela had clambered over the piles of irregular rocks that formed a kind of rough perimeter of the plateau itself.

Bronson was absolutely ready to call it a day and head back down the track when Angela suddenly called out to him.

“What’s this?”

Bronson walked over to where she was standing, close to the low cliff that marked the upper edge of the plateau and a little way to the left of where they’d spent most of their time searching. About five feet above the ground, he could just see something that looked like a small letter “V” on a rock, maybe a couple of inches tall, but so faded and weathered that it was only when they traced the indentation with their fingers that they were sure it wasn’t just their eyes deceiving them.

“Do you feel it?” Angela asked.

“I think so, yes,” Bronson said, “but is it a ‘V’ or what’s left of the letter ‘M’ or ‘W,’ or even a downward- pointing arrow? It’s so weathered it could be almost anything.”

Angela ran her fingertips over the rock on both sides of the indentation. “I can’t feel any other letters,” she said.

“There might not be any,” Bronson suggested, “and I suppose a ‘V’ is more likely.

Marcellus wouldn’t have wanted anyone finding this by accident, so any marker he left would have been fairly discreet. He probably wouldn’t have wanted his initials on the stone, either, but a simple ‘V’ for Vanidici makes sense to me.”

“So what now?” Angela asked.

Bronson pointed down at the base of the rock face in front of them, where there was a jumble of boulders that had obviously remained untouched for years, possibly centuries. “We find out what’s under that lot,” he said. “Hang on here. I’ll bring the jeep over.”

He trotted back to the Toyota, started the engine and backed the vehicle up as close as he could to the rock face. He opened the tailgate and took out the crowbar, then inserted the tip behind one of the smaller boulders on top of the pile and levered it away from the rock. It tumbled away with a satisfying crash.

“Can I help?” Angela asked.

“No,” Bronson grunted, “because these are sodding heavy rocks, and it’s all I can do to shift them. But it might be an idea if you took pictures every time I moved a couple, just to document the scene.”

Angela walked over to the Toyota to collect a bottle of water and the digital camera, and Bronson freed