The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud

  “I’m concerned about this situation. Bakkalbasi has seven men in all, Addaio has hired a professional killer, and Marco Valoni has put a whole team of men and equipment in place. Won’t we be terribly exposed? Wouldn’t it be better to let them resolve this themselves?” the Frenchman asked.

  “We have been briefed on all the details of both operations—we can monitor them with little danger of exposure of our people. As for Addaio’s man, there is no problem there. He can be easily controlled,” replied the older man.

  “Even so, I, too, am inclined to believe that there are too many people in this,” said a gentleman with an indeterminate accent.

  “Mendib is a problem for Addaio and for us because Valoni will not let go of this as long as he has a lead,” the older man insisted. “But I am much more concerned about the reporter, the sister of the Europol representative, and that Dottoréssa Galloni. The conclusions those two are reaching bring them perilously close to us. Ana Jiménez has met with Lady Elisabeth McKenny, who gave her a file, or the summary of a file, on the Templars. You know the one. I’m sorry, very sorry, to come to this point, but Lady Elisabeth, Ms. Jiménez, and Dottoréssa Galloni are becoming a problem. A threat to our existence, in fact.”

  A heavy silence fell over the others, who exchanged surreptitious glances.

  “What do you propose to do?” The Italian’s tone carried a touch of defiance as he asked the direct question.

  “What has to be done. I’m sorry.”

  “We mustn’t rush into this.”

  “And we haven’t, which is why they’re much further along in their speculations than is comfortable for us. We must act before it is too late. I want your advice, but I also want your consent.”

  “Can we not wait awhile longer?” asked the ex-military man.

  “No, we can’t, not without endangering everything. It would be madness to go on taking risks. I’m sorry, sincerely sorry. The decision is as repugnant to me as it is to you, but I can find no other solution. If you think there is one, tell me.”

  The other six men were silent. They all knew deep down that he was right. The enormous amount of money Paul Bisol had spent on security had been for nothing. For years they had intercepted the couple’s mail. They had inserted spyware on their computers, a keystroke logger program, and they had tapped Enigmas’ telephones; they had installed sophisticated bugs in the editorial offices and in their home.

  They knew everything about them—as for months they had been learning everything about Sofia Galloni and Ana Jiménez, from the perfume they wore to what they read at night, who they spoke to, their love life…everything, absolutely everything.

  The other members of the Art Crimes Department had all been under relentless surveillance as well—all their telephone calls, both landline and cellular, had been intercepted, and each of them had been followed around the clock.

  “So?” the older man insisted.

  “I hesitate to—”

  “I understand,” the older man interrupted the Italian, “I understand. Say no more. You need not take part in the decision.”

  “Do you think that lightens my conscience?”

  “No, I know it doesn’t. But it can help. I think you need that help, spiritual help. We have all passed through moments like this in our lives. It has not been easy, but we have not chosen the easy road—we have chosen the impossible. It is in circumstances such as these that the nobility of our mission becomes the measure of ourselves.”

  “After dedicating my entire life…do you think that I still have to prove that I am worthy of our mission?”

  “Of course not. You need not prove anything,” his master replied. “But you are suffering. We can all see that. You must look within yourself, and to God, for the strength you have always had. For now, please, trust in our judgment and let us act as we must.”

  “No, I cannot agree to that.”

  “I can suspend you temporarily, until you are yourself again.”

  “You can do that. What else will you do?”

  As other guests began to glance toward them, the military man interrupted. “That’s enough. They’re looking at us. Let’s leave this for another moment.”

  “There is no time,” the older man replied. “I must ask for your consent now.”

  “So be it,” said all the men but one, who, lips tight with anger and frustration, turned on his heel and strode away.

  Sofia and Minerva were at carabinieri headquarters in Turin. It was two minutes till nine, and through the microphone hidden under the lapel of his jacket, Marco had notified them that the gates of the prison were opening. He watched the mute come out, walking slowly, looking straight ahead, even as the gate closed behind him. His calm was surprising, Marco thought. There was no emotion, no sign that he welcomed freedom after years of confinement.

  Mendib told himself that he was being watched. He didn’t see them, but he knew they were there, watching. He was going to have to throw them off his trail, lose them, but how? He would try to follow the plan he had made in prison. He would go to the center of the city, wander about, sleep on a bench in some park. He didn’t have much money; he could pay for a room in a pensíone for three or four days at the most and eat only panini. He would also get rid of these clothes and shoes; although he had gone over them carefully and found nothing, he was instinctively uncomfortable about them since they had been in the possession of the guards for laundering.

  He knew Turin. Addaio had sent him and his brothers here a year before their attempt to steal the shroud, precisely so that they could become familiar with the city. He had followed the pastor’s instructions: walk and walk and walk, all over the city. It was the best way to come to know it. He’d also learned the bus routes.

  He was approaching the center of Turin, walking through the Crocetta district. The moment of truth had come—the moment to escape the people who were surely following him.

  “I think we’ve got company.”

  Marco’s voice came over the transmitter in their operations center.

  “Who are they?” asked Minerva.

  “No idea—but they look like Turks.”

  “Turks or Italians,” they heard Giuseppe say. “Black hair, olive skin.”

  “How many are there?” Sofia asked.

  “Two, for the moment,” Marco said, “but there may be more. They’re young. The mute seems oblivious. He’s wandering around, looking at the windows—as out to lunch as usual.”

  They heard Marco give the carabinieri instructions not to lose sight of the two unknown tails.

  Neither Marco nor the other police officers focused on a limping old man who was selling lottery tickets. Neither tall nor short, neither heavyset nor thin, dressed anonymously and impersonally, the old man was just part of the landscape of the neighborhood.

  But the old man had seen them. The killer hired by Addaio missed nothing, and so far he had identified half a dozen cops, plus four of the men sent by Bakkalbasi.

  He was irritated—the man who’d hired him hadn’t told him that the cops would be swarming all over the place or that there were other killers like him after his target. He’d have to take his time, develop a new plan.

  Another man made him suspicious, too, at first, but he’d shaken it off after a while. No, that one was no cop, and he didn’t look Turkish either—he didn’t have anything to do with this, although the way he moved…Then he was gone, and the killer breathed easy. The guy was nothing.

  All day, Mendib wandered through the city. He had rejected the idea of sleeping on a bench; it would be a mistake. If someone wanted to kill him, he would be making it too easy if he slept out in the open in a park. So at dusk he made his way to a homeless shelter that he’d seen that morning, run by the Sisters of Charity. He would be safer there.

  Once they established that the mute had eaten and settled himself on a thin mattress near the dormitory entrance, where one of the nuns sat to prevent fights among the inmates, Marco felt confident
their subject wouldn’t be moving again that night. He decided to go to the hotel and get a little sleep, and he ordered his team to do the same thing, except for Pietro, whom he left in charge with a relief team of three fresh carabinieri—enough to follow the mute if he emerged again unexpectedly.

  Ana Jiménez was waiting in the Paris airport for a night flight to Rome. From there she’d continue on to Turin. She was nervous and disturbed by what she’d been reading in Elisabeth’s file. If just a fraction of what was in it was true, it would be terrible. There were dimensions to this story she’d never imagined when she began, things that seemed to relate to the shroud—or some great secret—yet had nothing to do with France or Turin. But the reason she’d decided to go back to Turin anyway was that she’d seen one of the names that appeared in the file in another report—the one that Marco Valoni had given her brother to read. And if what Elisabeth said was true, that name belonged to one of the masters of the new Temple and related directly to the shroud.

  She had made two decisions: one, to talk to Sofia, and two, to go to the cathedral and surprise Padre Yves. She’d spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon trying to contact Sofia, but the desk at the Alexandra had informed her that she’d left very early, and Ana had yet to get any reply from the several voice-mail messages she’d left for her. There seemed to be no way to get in touch with the dottoréssa at this moment. As for Padre Yves, she’d see him the next day, one way or the other.

  Elisabeth was right—she was getting close to something, although to what she wasn’t sure.

  Bakkalbasi’s men had managed to lose the carabinieri. One of them stayed outside the Sisters of Charity shelter, watching to be sure Mendib didn’t leave; the others dispersed. By the time they reached the cemetery, it was nightfall and the guard was waiting for them nervously.

  “Hurry, hurry, I have to leave,” he hissed as he motioned them inside. “I will give you a key to the gate, in case you come too late one night and I have had to go.”

  The entrance of the mausoleum he led them to was protected by an angel with a sword raised high in one hand. The four men went inside, lighting their way with a flashlight, and disappeared into the bowels of the earth.

  Ismet was waiting for them in the underground room. He had brought water for them to wash with, and food. They were hungry and tired, and all they wanted was to sleep.

  “Where is Mehmet?”

  “He stayed where Mendib is sleeping, in case he decides to leave the shelter tonight. Addaio is right—they want Mendib to lead them to us. They have a big team shadowing him,” said one of the men, who in Urfa was a police officer, as was one of his companions.

  “Did they see you?” asked Ismet, worried.

  “I don’t think so,” another of the men answered, “but we can’t be sure—there are a lot of them.”

  “You mustn’t lead them here. Do you understand? If you think you are being followed, you can’t come back here,” Ismet insisted.

  “We know, we know,” the police officer reassured him. “Don’t worry. No one followed us.”

  By six a.m. Marco was positioned near the Sisters of Charity shelter again. He had called in reinforcements for the carabinieri team, who had lost the two Turkish tails the night before.

  “If—when—they show up again, be sure they don’t see you,” he snapped. “I want them alive and squawking when this is over. If they’re following the mute, we’re going to want them. Meanwhile we need to give them a little more slack.”

  His men had nodded. Pietro insisted he was going to keep working, despite the fact that he hadn’t slept the night before.

  Sofia had heard the rising anxiety in Ana’s voice in the voice-mail messages she’d left. At the hotel they’d told her that Ana had also called there five times. She felt a twinge of remorse for not having returned the calls, but this was no time to be distracting herself with the reporter’s wild theories. She’d call when they closed the case; until then she was going to concentrate all her energies on following Marco’s orders. She and Minerva were about to leave for carabinieri headquarters when a bellman came running toward them.

  “Dottoréssa Galloni, dottoréssa!”

  “Yes, what’s wrong?”

  “You have a telephone call; they say it’s urgent.”

  “I can’t take it now; tell the front desk to take a message and—”

  “Front desk told me that Signor D’Alaqua says it’s very important.”

  “D’Alaqua?”

  “Yes. That’s who’s calling.”

  Sofia waved Minerva on, turned, and headed directly to one of the house phones.

  “This is Dottoréssa Galloni; I think I have a call.”

  “Oh, dottoréssa, thank goodness! Signor D’Alaqua was very insistent that we find you. One moment, please.”

  Umberto D’Alaqua’s distinctive voice had a different quality, tense, controlled. “Sofia…”

  “Yes, how are you?”

  “I need to see you.”

  “I’d love to, but—”

  “No buts. My car will be there in ten minutes.”

  “I’m sorry—I’m on my way to work. I can’t today. Is something wrong?”

  “I have a proposal for you. You know that my great passion is archaeology—well, I’m off to Syria. I have permission for a dig there, and my people have found some pieces that I’d like you to look at. I have to leave immediately, but on the way I’d like to talk to you. I’d like to make you a job offer.”

  “I appreciate that, really, but right now I can’t possibly go. I’m sorry,” she replied, astonished by the entire exchange.

  “Sofia, sometimes there are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.”

  “That’s true. But there are also responsibilities that one can’t abandon. And right now I just can’t leave what I’m doing. If you can wait two or three days, then maybe—”

  “No, it can’t wait three days.”

  “Is it so important that you leave for Syria today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I really am. I might be able to go in a few days….”

  “No, I don’t think so. I beg you to come with me now.”

  Sofia hesitated. Umberto D’Alaqua’s proposal was as disconcerting as his peremptory tone.

  “What’s happening? Tell me.”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “I’m sorry, truly. Listen, I’ve got to go, they’re waiting for me.”

  “Good luck, then, dottoréssa,” he said, the life evaporating from his voice. “Take care of yourself.”

  “Yes, of course, thank you.” She heard the line click and placed the phone back in its cradle.

  Why was he wishing her good luck? He’d sounded utterly defeated. Good luck with what? Could he possibly know about the operation they were in the midst of?

  When she finished the case she’d call him. She was sure that there was something else behind his extraordinary offer and that it was not a love affair he had in mind.

  “What did D’Alaqua want?” Minerva had waited for her, and they walked out of the hotel together.

  “For me to go with him to Syria.”

  “Syria! What for?”

  “He’s got a permit to do an archaeological excavation there. He wanted me to help him.”

  “Some romantic getaway.”

  “He was asking me to go away, but it wasn’t romantic. He sounded worried.”

  By the time they reached carabinieri headquarters, Marco had called twice. He was in a foul mood. The transmitter they’d planted on the mute wasn’t working. It was sending out beeps, but the beeps didn’t match the direction in which he was walking. They soon realized that their man had changed shoes. The ones he was wearing now were older, more worn-looking. He’d also put on a pair of filthy jeans and an equally filthy jacket. Somebody had made a great deal on the trade.

  At the moment they were watching their target walk aimlessly around the Parco Carrara. The two tails from the
day before were nowhere to be seen, at least so far.

  The mute was carrying a hunk of bread, and as he walked he pinched pieces off it and scattered crumbs for the birds. He crossed paths with a man walking hand-in-hand with two little girls, and Marco thought the man stared into the mute’s eyes for a few seconds before he moved on.

  The killer came to the same conclusion. That must be the guy’s contact. He still couldn’t make his move—there was no way; the guy was surrounded by cops. Shooting him would be tantamount to committing suicide. He’d follow him for two more days, and if things didn’t change, he’d forget about the contract—he wasn’t going to risk his own neck just to kill some miserable tongueless Turk.

  Neither Marco nor his men, nor the Turkish tail, nor even, this time, the killer, noticed that they themselves were being watched. After he took his girls home, Arslan, the long-time community contact, called his cousin. Yes, he had seen Mendib; they’d crossed paths in the Parco Carrara. He looked fine. But he hadn’t made any sign—nothing. Apparently he didn’t feel secure yet—and with good reason.

  Ana Jiménez asked the taxi driver to take her to the Turin Cathedral. She entered through the door to the cathedral offices and asked to see Padre Yves.

  “He is not in, I’m afraid,” said the secretary. “He is with the cardinal, on a pastoral visit. You do not have an appointment, I think; is that correct?”

  “No, you’re right, but I know that Padre Yves would be delighted to see me,” Ana said curtly, knowing she was being rude, annoyed by the secretary’s smugness.

  She’d been doubly unlucky. She’d called Sofia again and missed her. She decided to linger in the neighborhood around the cathedral and wait until Yves de Charny returned.

  Listening to the report, Bakkalbasi was in a quandary. Mendib was still wandering around the city—it looked as though it would be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to kill him. There were carabinieri everywhere. If Bakkalbasi’s men continued the pursuit, they were going to wind up being spotted themselves.