“Check the whole building,” Mandino instructed Rogan. “Start with the roof terrace and work your way down. I’ll stay on the ground floor in case they’re somewhere here. When you see Bronson and Lewis, leave Perini and Verrochio to cover them, and come and fetch me.”
“Understood.”
Rogan led the way up to the deserted roof terrace and worked his way back down, checking each level carefully.
“No sign of them, capo,” he reported, when he returned to the ground floor. “Could they have slipped away somehow?”
“Not through the front entrance,” Perini answered. “We were both watching it carefully. They definitely didn’t come out again.”
“There’s a basement with a private library,” Mandino told them, checking a museum information leaflet. “They must be down there. Let’s go.”
It was almost closing time as Mandino led the way toward the basement entrance. As they approached, a guard came over to them, raising his hand to stop them.
“Take him, Perini,” Mandino murmured, as the man walked toward them, “but do it quietly, then lock the doors. We don’t want any interruptions.”
Perini drew his pistol and jammed it into the man’s stomach.
“Verrochio,” Mandino said, turning away, “take the receptionist. Rogan, secure the shop.”
Under the silent pressure of Perini’s Glock, the guard walked over to the main doors, which he closed and locked. Verrochio escorted the receptionist over to the museum shop, the sight of his pistol ensuring her silent cooperation. Two late visitors and the shop assistant stood quaking at the far end of the shop, their arms in the air, while Rogan covered the three of them. Perini produced a handful of plastic cable ties and handed them to Verrochio, who expertly tied up all five people, making them sit on the floor and lashing their hands behind their backs and tying their ankles together.
“There’s hardly any money in the till,” the assistant said, her voice quavering.
“We’re not interested in the takings,” Perini told her. “Keep quiet—that means no shouting for help—and you won’t be harmed. If any of you yell out, I’ll shoot. And I don’t care who gets hurt. Do you understand?”
All five nodded vigorously.
Josep Puente had always taken pride in his faith. He was a Roman Catholic, born and raised. He attended mass every Sunday. But what he’d read that afternoon in the two diptychs and the scroll had turned his world upside down. And he really didn’t know what he should do about it. He did know that the three objects—whether elaborate and convincing forgeries or genuine relics—were probably the most important ancient documents that he, or anyone else, would ever see.
When they heard the sound of approaching footsteps, none of them paid much attention. Then a man stepped through the doorway, flanked by three others, each holding a pistol.
“So, Lewis, we meet again,” Mandino said, his voice cutting through the silence. “And where’s Bronson?”
For several seconds nobody said a word. Angela and Puente were sitting on opposite sides of the library table, the scroll and the diptychs in front of them.
Bronson was out of sight, walking between the library shelves. The moment he heard Mandino speak, he drew the Browning pistol and crept back toward the center of the room.
He risked a quick glance around a freestanding bookcase to check exactly where the intruders were, then took four rapid strides across the room. Two of the gunmen saw him, but before they could react he’d cocked the Browning—the metallic sound unnaturally loud in the tomb-like silence—seized the back of Mandino’s collar with his left hand and placed the barrel of the pistol firmly against his head. Bronson pulled the man backward, away from his armed companions, the pistol never wavering.
“It’s time,” Bronson said, “to find out what the hell’s going on, starting with why you’re here, Mandino.”
He felt the man give a start of surprise.
“Yes, I know exactly who you are,” Bronson said. “Tell your men to lower their weapons, otherwise the Rome family of the Cosa Nostra is going to be looking for a new capofamiglia.”
“The bodyguard, I suppose?” Mandino’s voice was surprisingly calm. “Put your weapons away,” he told his men, then turned his head slightly toward Bronson. “I’ll tell you what I know, but it will take some time.”
“I’m not in any particular hurry,” Bronson said. “Angela, can you bring a couple of chairs over here? Put one behind the other, back to back.”
Bronson pushed Mandino onto the front chair, and he sat down on the one behind, resting the muzzle of the Hi-Power on the chair back, so that it was just touching his captive’s neck. Rogan and the other two men took seats between Mandino and the table where Angela and Puente were sitting.
“This story started,” Mandino said, “in first-century Rome, but the Vatican’s involvement only began in the seventh century. I’m nothing to do with the Church, but my organization—the Cosa Nostra—was contracted to resolve this problem on its behalf. The Mafia and the Vatican are two of the longest-lived organizations in Italy, and we’ve had a mutually beneficial relationship for years.”
“Why don’t I find that surprising?” Bronson murmured.
“In the first century A.D., the Romans had been fighting the Jews for decades, and the constant military campaigns were weakening the empire. Rather than initiate a massive military response, Emperor Nero decided to create a new religion, based on one of the dozens of messiahs who were then wandering about the Middle East. He chose a Roman citizen called Saul of Tarsus as his paid agent. Together they decided that a minor prophet and self-proclaimed messiah named Jesus, who had died in obscurity somewhere in Europe a few years earlier after attracting a small following in Judea, was ideal. Nero and Saul concocted a plan that would allow Saul to hijack the fledgling religion for his own purposes.
“Saul would first achieve a reputation as a persecutor of Christians, as the followers of Jesus were becoming known, and then undergo a spiritual ‘revelation’ that would turn him from persecutor into apostle. This would allow Saul to insinuate himself into a position of power and leadership, and he would then direct the followers—mainly Jews, of course—into a path of peaceful cooperation with the Roman occupying forces. He would tell them to ‘turn the other cheek,’ ‘render unto Caesar’ and so on.
“In order to achieve this fairly quickly, Saul needed to ‘talk up’ Jesus into far more than he ever was in real life. He decided that the obvious option was to portray him as the son of God. He concocted a variety of stories about him, starting with the virgin birth and finishing with him rising from the dead, and proclaimed these to be the absolute truth.
“To help him spread the word, he recruited a man named Simon ben Jonah—a weak and gullible man—who had known Jesus personally, but had regarded him as nothing more than just another prophet. Simon—who later became much better known as St. Peter—also entered Nero’s employment, but toward the end of his life he began to believe his own stories. A third man—Joseph, son of Matthias, better known as Flavius Josephus—later joined them, but as far as we know he was a true believer. All three men preached Saul’s version of events, attempting to recruit Jews who, because of their teachings as Jesus’s ‘disciples,’ had become peace-loving people who no longer wished to fight the Romans.”