formal and lasting peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians had once again been tabled.
“Will you be home early tonight?”
“Should be,” he said, preoccupied.
Carmela pushed down on the newspaper to get his attention. “I was hoping maybe you could take me out to that new bistro Claudio and Anna-Maria were talking about the other night.”
“Of course, sweetheart. That would be wonderful. Would you make a reservation for eight o’clock?”
“Maybe you can find some time to fix that railing before we leave.”
Grinning, Bersei said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’m going up to take a shower.” Sipping her coffee, she shuffled away.
Bersei turned to where the article continued. Immediately, he felt like he had been punched in the gut. Staring up at him was a photofit rendition of a man that looked all too familiar.
Reading the caption beneath, he mouthed the words aloud: “ ‘The suspect is said to be a Caucasian male, approximately 180 centimeters tall and 88 kilos. Authorities state he is traveling under the assumed identity of Daniel Marrone, and are looking for any information concerning his whereabouts.’ ”
Suddenly, everything was moving in slow motion. He collapsed back into his chair.
The only possible explanation could be that the Vatican was somehow involved in what was happening in Israel. But that was impossible.Orwas it?
Bersei tried to reconcile the timing of the events over the past few days. According to the news report, this theft in Jerusalem had occurred last Friday. A week ago. Both he and Charlotte had arrived in Vatican City shortly afterward. She’d flown into Rome on Sunday afternoon. He arrived on Monday morning, shortly before Father Donovan and Salvatore Conte returned with the mysterious crate.
Of course. Recalling the woven impressions left on the ossuary’s patina, he no longer suspected a careless extraction. He suspected a rushed extraction. A theft?
He remembered Father Donovan’s expression when he opened the crate—anxiety...and something else playing in his eyes. The crate’s Eurostar shipping label was still imprinted into his brain. Bari, the final resting place of Saint Nicholas. The vibrant tourist spot on Italy’s east coast faced the Adriatic with direct sea routes to the Mediterranean...and Israel. Bari was 500 kilometers from Rome—probably less than five hours by rail, he guessed. But it had to be at least 2000 kilometers from Israel.
You’d need an awfully fast boat for that, he thought. But cruising at twenty knots—just over thirty-seven kilometers an hour—it was manageable in perhaps two days. Conservatively allowing for two and a half days at sea and another half day traversing Italy, the shipment fitted comfortably into the time frame.
He went back to the news article. Thirteen Israeli soldiers killed. The thieves had been sophisticated and no meaningful clues had been found.
Was the Vatican really capable of pulling off an operation like that? But an Israeli helicopter employed in the theft? It didn’t make sense. Certainly Father Donovan—a cleric for Christ’s sake!—wasn’t capable of such a thing.
But Salvatore Conte...He eyed the photofit again and felt nothing but fear.
Bersei considered a second theory. Maybe the Vatican had bought the ossuary from whoever stole it and had been unwittingly caught up in the incident? Even so, that could prove very problematic for the Vatican. They could be drawn into this mess as an accomplice. One thing was certain: somehow the relics sitting in the Vatican basement had a very questionable procurement.
He wrestled with how to deal with all this. Should he consult with Charlotte? Or should he go to the authorities.
You can’t make wild claims without adequate proof, he told himself.
Setting the paper down, Giovanni went over to the phone and asked the operator to connect him to the local substation for the Carabiniere— Italy’s military police force that walked the streets of Rome with submachine guns as if the city was under a constant state of martial law. A young male voice picked up the call and Giovanni requested to speak with the resident detective. After a few brief questions, the young man informed Giovanni that he’d need to speak with Detective Armando Perardi who wasn’t expected in the office until nine-thirty.
“Can I have his voice mail, please?” Giovanni requested in Italian.
The line clicked and went silent for a few seconds before Detective Perardi’s glum greeting came on. Giovanni waited for the tone, then left a brief message, requesting a meeting later in the morning to discuss a possible Roman link to the theft in Jerusalem. He left his mobile phone number. For now, he didn’t make any reference to the Vatican. That would only confuse the issue since the Vatican was its own country. Ending the call, Bersei hurried upstairs to put on his clothes. He would need to act quickly.
*** Parking his Vespa in the personnel parking lot outside the Vatican Museum, Giovanni quickly made his way through the Pio Christian gallery’s rear service entrance.
As the elevator doors opened into the basement corridor, he experienced a wave of panic, hoping that no one else had decided to come in early this morning. He checked his watch—7:32.
What he needed to do had to be done alone. Charlotte Hennesey couldn’t be dragged into this. After all, what if he was wrong?
As he moved out of the elevator, the corridor seemed to come alive, as if he were Jonah being swallowed by the whale. He lightly treaded his way to the lab and used his keycard to unlock the door. Looking over his shoulder to see that the corridor was still clear, he ducked inside and went directly to the workstation.
The spikes and coins sat on the tray. Beside them lay the last of the ossuary’s mysteries—the scroll cylinder. There was something about it that stirred him. If his foreboding about all of this were correct, there’d be no future opportunity to read it. And something prompted him that it contained critical clues about the relic’s provenance.
Careful study of the ossuary and its relics had left him in little doubt that the ossuary originated from Israel. The stone and patina were both specific to the region. He eyed the skeleton laid out on the workstation— the bones, too, supported the relic’s provenance. Crucifixions had been commonplace in Judea during the first century. And studying the ossuary one last time, he ran his fingers over the early Christian symbol for Christ—the very thing
