He had first seen the document just more than a decade earlier, and it had frankly terrified him then. He wasn’t even sure why he was looking at it again. There was no information in the Codex he hadn’t already studied and memorized.
The conversation he’d had with Mandino had disturbed him more than he was willing to admit, and as soon as he’d returned to his offices in the Vatican, Vertutti had spent more than an hour meditating and praying for guidance. It greatly concerned him that the very future of the Vatican had, almost by chance, been placed in the hands of a man who was not only a career criminal, but—far worse—also a committed atheist, a man who was apparently almost rabid in his hatred of the Catholic Church.
But as far as Vertutti could see, there was no alternative. Mandino held all the cards. Thanks to Vertutti’s predecessor in the dicastery, and despite the most explicit prohibitions against the dissemination of such information, the mobster had intimate knowledge of the quest begun by Pope Vitalian almost one and a half millennia earlier. On the plus side, he also had the necessary technical resources to complete the task, and men who were willing to follow whatever orders he gave.
Vertutti’s gaze dropped down to the Codex. He’d been turning the pages of the ancient document without really seeing them. Now, as he stared at the Latin sentences, he realized that the open page described the finding of the text that had so terrified Pope Vitalian, and had produced the same effect on his successors through the ages. Vertutti read the words again—words almost as familiar to him as the prayers he offered daily—and shuddered.
Then he carefully closed the Codex. He would replace the document in its climate-controlled safe and then return to his office and his Bible. He needed to pray again, and perhaps the holy book would guide him, reveal to him the best way to try to avert the disaster that was almost certainly just around the corner.
III
To say the identification of Jackie’s body had been traumatic was an understatement. The moment the mortuary technician lifted the sheet to reveal his wife’s face, Mark virtually collapsed, and Bronson had to grab his arm to steady him. The police officer who’d been waiting for them outside the mortuary opened his notebook and asked formally, and in passable English, if the body was that of Jacqueline Mary Hampton, but all Mark could do was nod, before turning away and stumbling from the viewing room. Bronson sat him down in the waiting room, then returned to talk to the officer.
Bronson was holding it together, just. If Mark hadn’t been standing beside him, relying on him for support, he probably wouldn’t have been able to handle the moment. He’d been in mortuaries dozens of times as an attending officer, waiting for desperate relatives to confirm their nightmares and identify the corpse on the table, but this was the first time, ever, that he’d been on the other side, as it were.
Jackie looked incredibly peaceful, as though she was merely asleep and might at any moment open her eyes and sit up, and as beautiful as ever. Somebody had taken a lot of trouble over her appearance. Her hair was brushed back and looked freshly washed; her complexion appeared flawless. Bronson forced himself to take a closer look, tried to be professionally detached, and then saw the heavy makeup on her forehead and cheeks, obviously concealing large bruises. And she was pale, much paler than she’d ever been in life.
He shook hands with the police officer, took a long last look at the woman who’d been his first and all-consuming love, and stumbled out of the room.
Once the documentation had been completed, Bronson and Mark headed outside to the parked Alfa Romeo.
“I’m sorry, Chris,” Mark said, tears streaming uncontrollably down his face, his eyes red and puffy. “It only really hit me when I saw her body just lying there on that slab.”
Bronson just shook his head. He didn’t trust himself to speak without breaking down.
Their route out of the town took them past a pharmacy. Bronson pulled the car to a stop at the side of the road, went into the shop and emerged a few minutes later carrying a small paper bag.
“These should help,” he said, handing the bag to Mark. “They’re mild tranquilizers. They’ll help you to relax.”
At the house, Bronson poured his friend a glass of water and insisted he take a couple of the tablets.
“I won’t be able to sleep, Chris. Everything’s just going round and round in my head.”
“At least go and lie down upstairs. You need to rest, even if you stay awake all afternoon.”
Reluctantly, Mark took the drink and headed for the stairs.
Breakfast seemed an age ago, and Bronson found he was hungry. He looked in the walk-in larder and the big American fridge and found ham, bread and mustard, and made himself a couple of sandwiches and a pot of coffee to wash them down. When he’d finished eating he loaded the plates into the dishwasher and crept upstairs. Outside Mark’s bedroom he stopped and listened at the door. He could hear the sound of gentle snoring, so he knew the tranquilizers had done their job. He smiled briefly, then retraced his steps.
Bronson had looked around the house that morning, but he wanted to check the property again. He was still worried about the “burglary,” and was sure he must have missed something, some clue that would reveal why the property had been broken into.
He started in a methodical way, in the kitchen where the door had been forced, and then worked his way around the rest of the house. He even checked the garage and the two outbuildings where Mark kept the lawn mower and other gardening tools. Nothing appeared to be missing, and he could find no other sign of damage or forced entry anywhere in the house. It just didn’t make sense.
Bronson was standing in the hall, looking up at the staircase where Jackie had fallen, when he heard the crunch of car tires on the gravel drive. He peered out the window and saw that a police car had pulled up outside the house.
“You are Signor Hampton?” the officer asked in halting English, stepping forward and extending his hand.
“No,” Bronson replied, in fluent Italian. “My name’s Chris Bronson and I’m a close friend of Mark Hampton. You’ll appreciate that the death of his wife has come as a severe shock. He’s asleep upstairs and I really don’t want to disturb him unless I have to.”
The officer, seemingly relieved at Bronson’s command of the language, reverted to his native tongue. “I’ve been sent here to give Signor Hampton the results of the autopsy we carried out on his wife.”
“That’s no problem,” Bronson replied. “Come on in. I can explain everything to him when he wakes up.”
“Very well.” The policeman followed Bronson into the kitchen, sat down at the table and opened the slim briefcase he was carrying. He extracted a buff folder containing several typed sheets of paper, some photographs and diagrams.
“It was a tragic accident,” he began, and passed two pictures across to Bronson. “The first photograph shows the staircase of the house, taken from just inside the hall. If you look here”—he took a pen out of his uniform jacket pocket and pointed—“and here, you’ll see two slippers on the stairs, one close to the bottom and the other nearer the top. And this one shows the victim’s body lying on the floor at the foot of the staircase.”