The Lost Treasure of the Templars (8 page)

Via di Sant' Alessio, Aventine Hill, Rome, Italy

It wasn't the first time Marco Toscanelli had been summoned with such a high degree of urgency to the building on the Aventine Hill, but on this occasion he sensed that things were different. The moment the electric lock on the steel-lined door behind him had clicked shut, effectively turning the entire basement area into a giant Faraday cage, secure from any form of electronic eavesdropping, the feeling of excitement in the air was almost palpable.

“Go straight in,” the man who opened the door to him said. “He's expecting you.”

Toscanelli strode down the corridor to the door at the end, knocked twice, and then opened it and stepped inside the office.

It was a relatively small room, given the size of the property as a whole, but he knew that most of the space in the basement area was given over to the machines that handled the intercepts and the computers that interpreted the data. The human acolytes who tended the equipment
had to make do with whatever space was left over. Despite that, it was comfortable, with a thick carpet on the floor, paintings on the walls, and contemporary Italian furniture. The lack of outside light—this part of the building was entirely underground, but for security reasons no windows would have been provided in any case—was disguised by a false window positioned on the wall behind the desk and covered with curtaining, through which the “sun,” a small but powerful light, could be dimly seen.

Silvio Vitale, a slim man with a pencil mustache and dressed in a black suit, the head of the organization, was sitting in the leather swivel chair behind the desk, a number of sheets of paper in front of him. As Toscanelli entered the room he stood up and shook hands in a perfunctory manner and then gestured to the chair that stood to one side of the desk.

Toscanelli took a step over to it and sat down, then pointed at the heavy wooden upright armchair standing in the center of a square of rubber matting that had been placed on top of the office carpet. On one side of the chair was a body bag, unrolled and open, ready to receive a corpse.

“Who?” he asked simply. “And why?”

“Silvrini,” Vitale replied. “You do not need to know the reason.”

“I think I do,” Toscanelli said, chancing his arm. Vitale's short temper and capricious mood swings were legendary. “He was one of my team on the last job, in Venice. As far as I was aware he's a good operative.”

“He was, certainly,” Vitale agreed, emphasizing the tense of the word, then paused for a moment before nodding. “Very well. With knowledge comes responsibility, so you can perform the duty. He was detected arranging a meeting with a senior member of the Carabinieri here
in Rome, apparently intending to provide information about those two eliminations that took place in Ostia last year. The two men that you executed, in fact, so his intended betrayal was very personal to you, Marco.”

Toscanelli's male model face—he had elegant, regular features, high cheekbones, a wide mouth, brown eyes, and thick, curly black hair—hardened immediately. “You have proof?”

Vitale nodded and handed him a slim folder.

Toscanelli opened it and scanned the contents, the result of a short surveillance operation that had been performed on Silvrini after suspicions were raised about some of his actions.

“He was stupid,” Vitale commented. “He used a disposable mobile phone to make the call, but he used it inside the apartment that we provided for him. He should have known it was bugged.”

“Yes, he should,” Toscanelli agreed. “He certainly should. Does he know yet?”

“No, but he's waiting outside.”

Vitale bent forward across his desk and depressed the button on the intercom system.

“Bring him in now,” he ordered.

A few moments later the door opened and a man wearing a light gray suit stepped inside the room. He took one look at the chair, the body bag, and the rubber mat and immediately turned away, trying to leave.

But two other men had entered the room behind him. They, too, were smartly dressed, but they were built like nightclub bouncers, and Silvrini had no chance of getting past them. They grabbed his arms and half dragged, half carried him to the chair and forced him down onto the seat. One man held him in position while the other secured his wrists and ankles to the arms and legs of the
chair using plastic cable ties that were easy to use and as near unbreakable as made no difference, pulling them tight with pliers. Then both men stepped back and stood with their backs to the door, waiting impassively.

Silvrini was whimpering in terror, an incoherent muttering that was more babbling than recognizable speech. A dark stain suddenly appeared on the front of his trousers, a clear indication that he had lost control of his bladder and, in Toscanelli's eyes, probably an equally clear confirmation of his guilt.

Vitale waited without speaking, his hostile gaze fixed on the bound man in front of him, until Silvrini finally fell silent.

“You know why you are here, why this is happening to you,” Vitale said at last, a statement rather than a question.

Silvrini shook his head violently, and his voice, when he spoke, was pleading, almost whining.

“No, no. I have no idea. You must believe me. This has to be a mistake. Please, Silvio. You know me.”

“I do,” Vitale agreed, “and it was a mistake.”

For the briefest of instants the expression on the bound man's face showed relief, but Vitale's next words clearly dashed any hopes he might still have harbored.

“It was a mistake, and you made it. When you decided to betray the organization that employs you, it was the act of an idiot to make the call to the Carabinieri from the living room of an apartment owned by that organization.”

“But I didn't, Silvio. I promise you, I didn't. The brotherhood is my life, you know that. I would never—”

Vitale said nothing, but simply held up his finger for silence. Then he depressed a button on the console in front of him, and suddenly Silvrini's unmistakable voice
filled the room, the surveillance tape playing through the hidden speakers of a stereo system. The recording was short but utterly conclusive, the Italian telling the unidentified police officer that he had information about the two unsolved murders, and arranging a meeting in central Rome for the following afternoon—that very day, in fact.

“I wonder how long he'll sit there in that café, waiting for you,” Vitale said quietly. “Because you won't be at the rendezvous, obviously. But I expect you already guessed that.”

“It's not—” Silvrini began.

“It's not what, exactly? Not an attempt to betray this most holy of orders? Not a direct attack upon the brotherhood?”

Sivrini shook his head again. “Not—”

“Enough,” Vitale snapped, and gestured to the two men standing in front of the door. “We'll finish this right now.”

Both men strode forward. One held Silvrini's head still while the other wrapped a length of broad adhesive tape over his mouth, silencing the man.

Vitale nodded in satisfaction, then stood up. “Let us pray for absolution for our brother before punishment is administered,” he said.

Toscanelli stood up as well, and the four men bowed their heads. Vitale made the sign of the cross and then led them in a short prayer, humbly asking God to accept the soul of their soon-to-be-departed brother, Alberto Silvrini.

The bound man clearly knew what awaited him, and was thrashing from side to side in the chair in a frantic attempt to escape, but the plastic bonds held him firmly in place and the chair was too heavy to be toppled over
by his actions: it had been used for similar purposes on numerous occasions in the past, and had been designed to be very stable. All his violent action achieved was to open up cuts on his wrists where the plastic bonds dug into his skin.

As the prayer finished, Vitale made the sign of the cross again and resumed his seat behind the desk. He bent down, opened one of the drawers, and took out a digital video camera and a tripod. He spread the legs of the tripod, attached the camera to the platform at the top, and then adjusted its position until the figure of the helpless man, who was still writhing and struggling to get free, filled the viewfinder. Then he switched on the camera, and waited until he was sure it was recording before he spoke again, the tone of his voice almost regretful, his words measured and carefully considered, after the manner of a judge. Which was, after all, what he was in this case, essentially a triumvirate in the person of a single individual: judge, jury, and executioner.

“Alberto Silvrini. You have been condemned out of your own mouth and by your own words and actions. You have attempted to betray the brotherhood in the most diabolical and underhand way, and for that the sentence is death. But because of the nature of your offense, that mercy will not be granted immediately. You are to suffer before you die, but in accordance with that most ancient of all the tenets that we hold dear, not a drop of your blood will be spilled. Rest assured that you will die whole. Your suffering and death will be recorded for posterity and for our archives, and will serve as a warning to any other members of this brotherhood who might ever contemplate following the unfortunate example you have set.”

Hearing his sentence of death pronounced in such a
cold and dispassionate manner had the effect of making Silvrini redouble his efforts to escape, but to no purpose.

Vitale glanced at the two men now standing beside the wooden chair and nodded to them. “You may begin. On my count. One every minute.”

What followed was clinical in its brutal efficiency.

The man standing on Silvrini's left reached down, seized the bound man's little finger, and pulled it steadily backward, bracing his thumb just above the knuckle joint as a fulcrum. Silvrini went rigid, his face reddening and flushing as the pain began to bite. There was a sudden dull crack as the bone snapped, and even through the rudimentary gag Silvrini's howl of anguish could be heard. His body slumped against his bonds, his head dropping forward and tears springing from his eyes.

Precisely sixty seconds later, the man standing on Silvrini's right performed exactly the same operation on the bound man's right hand. And so it continued until every one of his fingers was broken and swollen. The thumbs were more difficult because the bones were thicker and stronger, but the two men had come prepared and used pliers to shatter those digits as well.

By the time they'd finished, Silvrini was virtually unconscious from the incredible pain he was suffering, and Vitale ordered Toscanelli to wait until he had recovered slightly before completing the procedure.

“It would be a mercy to kill him now,” Vitale said quietly, staring at the bound figure slumped in the chair in front of him, “before he's fully conscious, but we're not really in the mercy business.”

A few minutes later Silvrini lifted his head to stare at Vitale. His whole face was red, his cheeks streaked with
tears and the agony in his bloodshot eyes clear for all to see.

“Good,” Vitale said, “he's awake again. You may begin, Marco.”

Toscanelli nodded and stepped forward. He paused for a moment beside the prisoner and stared down at him.

“You've been a real disappointment to me, Alberto,” he said. “So this won't be quick, and certainly not as quick as you'd like.”

Silvrini looked up and shook his head.

Toscanelli flashed him a brilliant smile and stepped around behind the chair, where he was handed a loop of rope and a short length of wood by one of the men standing there. The chair had a high back, and in the center of the top rail a hole had been bored. Toscanelli fed the loop of rope through the hole and dropped it over Silvrini's head, then slid the length of wood into the smaller loop remaining at the other end.

He gave the rope a sharp tug, pulling Silvrini's head and neck against the chair back, then twisted the wood to start the garrote working. He increased the pressure on the wood, watching critically as the noose started to tighten around the man's neck. Silvrini began to choke, and he released the pressure a couple of turns, allowing the man to breathe again before once more twisting the rope tighter. He did that twice more, taking Silvrini to the point where he couldn't breathe and then easing the pressure, then stepped around to face his victim once more.

He lifted the doomed man's chin and stared into his face, and smiled again as Silvrini forced his eyes open for the last time.

“This is it, Alberto, so take your last breath.”

Then he stepped back behind the chair and twisted the rope again, taking his time as he slowly and steadily increased the pressure. Silvrini struggled and choked as the rope began to bite, his body thrashing hopelessly, helplessly, from side to side.

Toscanelli increased the pressure, turning the wood in the loop until it would turn no more, and held it there, watching critically as the man in front of him slowly died. His struggles grew weaker and weaker until finally he stopped moving altogether, but still Toscanelli maintained the pressure, making sure he finished the job completely. He held the wood in place for a two full minutes after Silvrini's last convulsive shudder, just to make absolutely sure.

Only then did he release his grip and step back, away from the chair, before moving forward to stare down for a moment at the dead man's face, the skin an unpleasant mixture of shades of red and black, the eyes open and staring blindly ahead. Then he strode back across the room and again sat down in the chair beside Vitale's desk, to allow room for the two enforcers to complete their work.

“Sometimes,” Vitale said, watching as the two men cut through the plastic ties and lifted Silvrini's body off the chair and lowered it none too gently into the body bag, “I think you enjoy that kind of thing just a little too much.”

Toscanelli shook his head, reached into the right-hand pocket of his jacket, took out an oblong packet, and opened one end. He extracted an unusually long and thin cigarette with a thin gold band around the filter, put it in his mouth, and lit it.