The Coptic Secret (40 page)

Aventine Hill

Via S. Sabina

Fifteen Minutes Later

The street was largely residential. Tops of cypress trees peeked timidly over a high wall, giving evidence of the private piazza within. What little traffic there was consisted of large cars moving sedately, many chauffeured and the occupants shielded by tinted glass. It was as if the sounds of the city were too heavy to float up the steep slope.

Lang pulled the Alfa to the curb and cut the engine, opposite massive wooden doors about fifteen feet high. Their most prominent feature was a huge brass keyhole through which a queue of Japanese tourists were alternately looking and consulting guidebooks.

They parted long enough for the gates to slowly swing open to admit a Mercedes limo. Even through its darkened glass, Lang caught a glimpse of a man in a plumed hat and black robe trimmed in scarlet. The momentary view of the piazza itself was of multiple buildings, two of which looked like churches. Lang strained to see where the Mercedes went, but the doors closed before he could.

"Doesn't look like Dracula's castle to me," Jacob observed. "In fact, the chap in the car looked like he was on his way to perform in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta."

"More likely to a meeting of the sovereign council."

"So you think the grand pooh-bah himself will be there."

"Grand master, yeah. He presides over the council until they elect a new one."

Jacob was fumbling in his pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch. "Jolly good show if you can be sure these are the sods that have caused you bother. Bag 'em on the spot." He reached up to touch the convertible's top. "May as well put the lid down".

"Good idea. See if you can give me a hand getting the top down on this hot rod, will you?"

In the course of an hour, Lang watched seven trucks pass through that gate, each bearing the names of foodstuffs. From the designs or pictures on the sides, he guessed at seafood, a butcher, two vegetable suppliers, two pasta makers and a baker. That wasn't counting the vintner.

"Looks like someone is having a party, all right," Jacob commented, "bringing the goodies in by the lorry load."

Lang got out of the car as a van, this one an electrician, pulled up to the gate. "Think I'll have a little look-see."

He waited until the vehicle had been admitted and the gates nearly closed before hurrying across the empty street to put his face against the keyhole. To his left was an ochre-colored building in neoclassic style. From the engraving he had bought at the stand near the Hertz office, he guessed he was looking at the priory church, Santa Maria del Priorato. Across the piazza, he could turn his head to see a somewhat more modest building of gray stone. From the number of windows, he gathered it housed offices or living quarters or both rather than the second church he had thought. After watching a crew carrying folding tables in, he guessed he was looking at the dining area. Several men in chefs' white jackets came out to inspect one of the grocery trucks. Whatever the structure, it was going to be the site of what looked like a major banquet.

Lang returned to the Alfa.

"If you're wanting to be seen, you have been," Jacob said cheerfully. "Chap in a dark suit watched you from down the street, was talking on a cell phone."

Lang turned the key in the ignition. "Good enough. Now let's see what we can flush out."

IV.

Aventine Hill

2100 Local Time

Lang stopped down the hill from the Knights of Malta priory. He let Jacob out into the dusky shadows between streetlights with a clear view of the gates. Parking in the same spot he had that afternoon, Lang scanned the blank walls with binoculars, well aware the lenses would reflect such little light as was available. Once, he got out of the cramped sports car to walk around it, a man stretching his legs during a tedious wait.

Half an hour later, he repeated the process, this time squatting beside the car at the end of his stroll. He slammed the door closed as loudly as possible.

If there was revelry going on inside, the walls muffled it. The only sound Lang could hear was a faint hum of city traffic below punctuated with a honk of distant horns. The cypress trees sighed contentedly with the fresh evening breeze as though thankful to be relieved of the heat of the day.

One or two limousines entered the priory, no doubt carrying latecomers. Nothing else entered or left.

Lang was about to decide he needed another tactic when he heard a sound, something that did not belong among the whispers of the trees or the faraway murmur of distant automobiles. He tensed, his eyes trying to probe the darkness. Shadows of gently moving cypress branches haunted the street. Somewhere down the hill a motor scooter coughed to life.

Then he heard it again, a scuffling, scraping sound, the sound of shoe leather on pavement.

They were on the Alfa almost before Lang saw them, four men, each carrying something.

He hardly had time to guess what before the night was shredded with gunfire. Four sets of muzzle flashes burned into Lang's retinas as his ears rang with what must have been hundreds of rounds from automatic weapons.

Like a living creature, the Alfa shuddered under the impact of the fusillade, bullets shattering glass and piercing metal The little car seemed to utter a death shudder as it sank on bare rims from which the tires had been shredded.

The storm of gunfire passed as quickly as it had begun. Quiet pressed on Lang's eardrums, relieved only by the hissing of a punctured radiator. The pulsating wail of a siren was growing stronger. There would be no time for the would-be killers to verify their work.

From the shadows in which he had hidden the second time he had gotten out of the car, he watched as the gates across the street swung slowly open to allow the silhouettes of four men entry.

Up and down the street, lights were coming on. The curious and foolhardy were wandering outside. Questions were shouted into the dark.

"I'd say you've gotten your proof."

Lang flinched. He hadn't heard Jacob come up from his post downhill. "I'd say. Now we go to the second part of the plan."

Jacob placed a hand on Lang's shoulder, gently moving him away from the hole-riddled Alfa. "We'd best get along before the coppers show up."

V.

Thirty Minutes Later

Deputy Chief Police Inspector Hanaratti put a hand to his eyes to shade them from the glare of the lights arranged around the ruins of what had been an Alfa Romeo Spyder, the sort of car the inspector would have lusted after twenty years, three children and an ex-wife ago. It was so much scrap metal now. Not a square centimeter of the once sleek coachwork that didn't have a bullet hole in it. Fortunate for the driver he had escaped; he would not have survived the hailstorm of lead.

Hanaratti scowled. This looked very much like a botched Mafia job. Personally, he couldn't care less how many mafiosi bodies littered the streets. Good riddance to bad garbage. The problem was, one shooting usually begat another and another. The criminals could go to mattress as they called it, but the unaware civilian too often got caught in the cross fire.

And a strange location, too. One of the city's more upscale neighborhoods and right across the street from the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta. Could the shooting be related to the fact the order was having some sort of meeting? Like any good policeman, the inspector was suspicious of coincidences.

But it would be absurd to see a connection between some church order and organized crime, particularly the Mafia, which the church had denounced for centuries. He dismissed the idea but it stubbornly refused to vanish.

There was something else tiptoeing around the perimeter of his mind, like a man wary of stepping onto a floor of rotted wood.
What... ?

"No one inside heard the shots, Inspector."

Hanaratti had not noticed that Manicci was standing beside him. "It seems those old walls deafen a lot of sound," the junior inspector said.

It would take walls a lot thicker to prevent the sound of so much gunfire, Hanaratti thought sourly. The precinct had gotten telephone calls from as far as nearly a kilometer away. The priestly members of the order should set a better example than trying to evade cooperating with an investigation, no matter how important their meeting.

The priests.

The thought stirred something, an idea a little less reticent to step forward.

"From the license plate, we have learned the car was rented," Manicci continued.

We? Hanaratti thought. The inspector was a master of claiming credit due others, equally adept at passing along blame like a soup bowl too hot to hold. The perfect bureaucrat but not someone Hanaratti would have chosen for this particularly brazen crime. But he didn't get to choose with whom he worked. Manicci was married to the daughter of the chief inspector's wife's first cousin.

In Italy, nepotism was a matter of family pride.

"We have already located the Hertz office and the manager will meet one of my men there to ascertain the name of the person renting it."

Opportunity knocked.

"One of your men? It is too important to entrust to an underling. Go yourself."

Hanaratti tried not to smile as he savored the disappointment on Manicci's face at being banished from the crime scene where he might seize the accolades for someone's discovery of an important bit of evidence. It was only as he was watching Manicci reluctantly climb into the blue and white Fiat that the idea he had been toying with solidified.

Priests.

A religious order.

It had been only a few weeks since that Greek Orthodox priest had been fished out of the Tiber after Hanaratti had investigated some sort of gun battle at his apartment near the Vatican.

Connection?

Tenuous at best, but priests were not the type one would ordinarily connect with violent acts, certainly not as perpetrators and usually not as victims.

Coincidences.

"Inspector?"

One of the uniforms was at his elbow.

"We have just received a report that the car, the Alfa there, was stolen from near the Pantheon."

Hanaratti felt his gut clinch as he saw the most obvious clue in this shooting begin to fade. "Stolen?"

"Yes, sir. It was rented to an American who is staying at a hotel near there."

"When?"

The officer looked confused. "

"'When'?"

The deputy chief inspector swallowed the urge to scream at the man. "When was it stolen?"

The policeman shrugged. "The American doesn't know. He went into a restaurant and when he came out, the car was gone."

Perfect.

At least Hanaratti would have the pleasure of assigning Manicci to a mundane car theft. After all, it was connected to a shooting, and interviewing the American would keep the junior inspector out of the main investigation for at least half of tomorrow.

Even misfortune had its bright side.

VI.

Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta

Aventine Hill

The Next Morning

It had taken most of the morning for Lang and Jacob to find a truck from the electrician they had seen entering the piazza yesterday. A few euro liberally spread among the two-man crew and Lang and Jacob were dressed in the same coveralls as the two legitimate workers. A little more money and the van was in front of the wooden gates, honking for admission.

The one electrician who spoke English was explaining in Italian that they were here to check on yesterday's job and, no, there would be no additional costs involved for the service. Once inside, Lang and Jacob, toolboxes in hand, split up to explore the multiwindowed gray stone building.

Their hopes the uniforms would give them the invisibility of anonymity proved to be correct. Cooks, serving personnel as well as a few workmen filled the hallways with good-natured confusion. The five-year meeting of the council had the air of a country fair. No one gave the two electricians a second look.

The larger offices were deserted, leaving only what Lang guessed was salaried administrative staff. Members and officials would be attending the meeting of the grand council in the church next door.

Jacob peered around the corner of the largest office either he or Lang had found. "Boss's digs, I'd bet."

Standing in the hall, Lang nervously looked both ways. "So?"

"So, we take a look."

Jacob was inside while Lang stood sentry in the hall.

Jacob picked up the phone on the desk, pushing all four buttons on its base one by one. Nodding as though confirming an undivulged theory, he followed the line to the wall plug, where he inserted an instrument resembling a thermometer.