The Second Messiah

In the back of the Fiat, Lela handed the binoculars back to Ari and said, “Where’s your agent who tailed Yasmin and Jack?”

Ari flicked his head to indicate the white Fiat taxi parked near the security gates. The middle-aged, unshaven driver stood by his cab, chewing on a toothpick as he watched the Vatican entrance. “Actually, he’s the cabdriver, Mario, who picked them up at the airport.”

“How did you manage that?”

Cohen answered, “We’ve had half a dozen people keeping tabs on Cane since the moment his flight touched down. We chose our moment at the taxi stand to try to get him to pick one of our cabs. Even if he hadn’t it wasn’t a big deal; we could still have tailed them.”

Ari peered through the binoculars and said to Cohen, “Did Mario overhear anything they said during the drive?”

“The couple kept their voices low but he definitely heard the word scroll mentioned.”

Ari sounded excited. “Good stuff.”

Cohen added, “Mario offered to be their guide for the day and take them wherever they wanted to go. They took the bait and had him drive them to the Vatican for an appointment. Then they left Mario at one of the entrances, saying they’d be back.”

Ari looked toward the busy St. Peter’s Square and rubbed his jaw. “Question one is, what are they doing in the Vatican? Question two is, who are the guys on their tail?”

Lela studied the men from the silver Lancia. One wore a dark leather jacket. He had stepped out of the car and moved across the square. A brutal-looking specimen, he had a broken nose, his body muscled by too many steroids. Lela thought that his high cheekbones gave him a Slavic appearance. He stood near the Vatican entrance, a carry-on bag draped over his shoulder, trying to look like a tourist as he studied a guide map.

The driver was Arab, slender and with a trimmed beard, in his twenties. Lela said, “Any ideas who they could be?”

Ari laid down the binoculars. “No, but it might be worth downloading their pictures to Tel Aviv and running a check on them, like we’re doing on Yasmin Green. Get your big ugly head out of the way, Cohen.”

The Mossad driver shifted in the front seat as Ari raised a zoom-lens digital camera and clicked off at least a dozen shots. When he finished he studied the results in the camera’s viewing window. Satisfied, he connected a short coil of black cable from the camera to his cell phone. “I got a few good ones.”

Ari pressed a series of buttons on his cell phone. As he waited for the data to transmit he was deep in thought and tapped his lips with his forefinger.

Lela asked, “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve been thinking. Why would they come to Rome? There’s an obvious answer.”

“What?”

“This city’s got a reputation as a hub for black-market antique dealings. What if Cane came here to offload the scroll?”

“We don’t even have a shred of evidence that they have it, Ari.”

“My gut instinct’s screaming at me that Cane’s here to sell the parchment.”

“Ari—”

“He and Yasmin aren’t here as tourists. They’re up to something.”

Before Lela could reply, Ari’s cell phone flashed a message and he said, “The pic data’s downloaded. We’ll see if our people can get lucky by matching those guys and Yasmin Green to any criminal or terrorist in Israel’s data banks. We can trawl even wider if we need to.”

“How long will it take?”

Ari disconnected the cable, coiled it up, and replaced it in the camera case. “Depends on how busy they are.” He reached under his seat and pulled out a Sig 9mm automatic pistol. “It’s time we grabbed Cane and his girlfriend and interrogated them. We make our move as soon as they show their faces.”

72

“Are you going to keep me in suspense?” Yasmin asked impatiently.

Jack’s face sparked as he plucked the drawing from the box and studied it under the magnifying glass. “It’s a rough drawing that represents an inscribed Roman slab. What they call a bas-relief. The reliefs were made to decorate a wall or building in an artful way, or to record important events.”

“I know what they are. What’s the big deal?”

“I saw a similar drawing in Father Novara’s study.”

“You mean depicting the exact same images?”

“I believe so. Both drawings were alike, with dramatic images of animals, monsters, and sylphs.”

“What’s the significance?”

Jack carefully shifted the drawing under the reading light, a burst of excitement infecting his voice. “When I first saw the drawing in Novara’s study, I had a feeling I’d seen these images before but couldn’t recall where. Now that I’ve seen the scroll shape the images are drawn within, I remember.”

“Remember what?”

“During the middle of the first century A.D., when the Emperor Nero ruled, Rome was a vast city with a population of about a million. It had many of the trappings of a modern society—apartment blocks, an intricate sewage system, fire brigades, a rudimentary police force, and law courts. One of the digs I worked on explored parts of underground Rome that are still intact from that period. Guess what?”

“I’m past guessing, Jack, just cut to the back end. The suspense is torture.”