Three A.M.
Locke Bullard stood in the enormous, vaulted salone of his villa, isolated on a hill south of Florence, his feelings betrayed only by the muscles working slowly above his massive jawline. He walked to the leaded windows that looked over the walled gardens, opened one with a shaking, knotted hand. The stars were obscured by clouds, the night sky perfectly black. A perfect night for this kind of business; as perfect as that other night had been, all those years ago. God, what he would give to undo that night . . . He shivered at the memory, or maybe it was just the cool breath of the wind sighing through the ancient trees in the pineta beyond the garden.
He stood at the window for some time, struggling to calm himself, to suppress a growing feeling of dread. Below, on the terrace, the indistinct white shapes of marble statues glowed faintly. Soon it would be over, he reminded himself. And he would be free. Free. But right now, he had to keep calm. He had to put his old, rational view of the world aside, if only for one night. Tomorrow, he could tell himself it had all been a bad dream.
With a great effort he cleared his mind, tried to focus on something else, even briefly. Beyond the swaying tops of the umbrella pines, he could see the outlines of cypresses on the far hills, and then the distant cupola of the Duomo, next to Giotto’s tower, brightly lit. Who was it that said only if you lived within sight of the Duomo were you a true Florentine? This was the same view Machiavelli had seen, exactly this: those hills, that famous dome, the distant tower. Perhaps Machiavelli had stood in this very spot five hundred years ago, working out the details of The Prince. Bullard had read the book when he was twenty. It was one of the reasons he’d jumped at the opportunity to own the villa Machiavelli was born and raised in.
Bullard wondered how Machiavelli would have reacted to this predicament. The great courtier would no doubt have felt the same things he did: dread and resignation. How do you make a choice when faced with a problem that has two solutions, both intolerable? He corrected himself: one was intolerable, the other unthinkable.
You accepted the intolerable.
He turned from the window and looked across the dim room at the clock on the mantelpiece. Ten minutes after three. He needed to make his final preparations.
He moved toward a table and lit a huge, ancient candle, whose glow illuminated an old piece of parchment: a certain page from a thirteenth-century grimoire. Then, taking up the ancient arthame knife that lay beside it, Bullard carefully began to score a circle in the terra-cotta floor of the room, working slowly, taking the utmost care to make sure the circle remained unbroken. When that was done, he took a piece of charcoal, specially prepared, and began to inscribe letters in Greek and Aramaic on the periphery of the circle, stopping now and then to consult the grimoire. He followed this by inscribing two pentagrams around it all. Next he inscribed a smaller circle—this one broken—beside the larger. He did not worry about being interrupted: he had dismissed all the security and the help. He wanted no chance of witnesses and—above all—no chance of interruption. When you were doing what he was about to do, raising what he hoped to raise, there could be no disruptions, no mistakes, nothing left out. The stakes were greater than his life—because, it seemed, the consequences would not end with his death.
He paused, preparations almost complete. It would not be long now. It would be over and then he could begin again. There would be, of course, minor loose ends to take care of: the disappearance of Pendergast and D’Agosta, for example; the Chinese and what had happened in Paterson. But it would be a relief to return to business as usual. Those problems, as tricky as they were, belonged to the real world, and he could handle them. They were small potatoes compared to this.
He went over the manuscript page again, then yet again, making sure he had missed nothing. Then, almost against his will, his gaze shifted to the old rectangular box sitting on the table. Now it was time for that.
He reached out, undid the brass latch. He caressed the polished surface of the box and then—with a terrible reluctance—opened it. A faint scent of antique wood and horsehair wafted upward. He breathed it in: this ancient perfume, this priceless scent. With a trembling hand, he reached into the darkness of the box, stroked the smooth object inside. He did not dare take it out—handling it had always frightened him a little. It was not made for him at all. It was made for others. Others who, if he was successful, would never see it again . . .