This time, when Angelina and Ben walked into the offices of the Papal Swiss Guard, they did so without their hands cuffed behind their backs or hoods over their eyes. They had made their appointment with Major Heinrich, who had instructed them to arrive as soon as they could. Darkness was once again covering the Vatican as Angelina and Ben approached, though this time the lights were lit and the domes and colonnades glowed in their brilliant splendour. They were met by guards who recognised them on sight, and escorted them together with Thomás into the belly of the Palace.
‘I’ve never been here before,’ Thomás confessed as they moved through the venerable space. His eyes were wide. ‘It always seemed so . . . worldly.’ But worldly apparently didn’t exclude captivating, and he soaked in the surroundings with visible awe.
When at last they reached the underground level that housed the Guard’s central command station, the trio passed through two security checkpoints and were led into Heinrich’s office. A fogged glass door drew silently closed behind them.
‘I sure as hell hope you’re over any thoughts of us being involved in any of this,’ were the first words out of Angelina’s mouth. Her eyes lasered into the Guardsman’s.
If Heinrich was surprised by the accusatory greeting, he didn’t let it show. ‘No, Dr Calla, we are not.’
She huffed.
‘In fact, we know precisely who is,’ Heinrich continued. He reached to a flat screen display on his desk and swivelled it to face his three guests.
‘Do any of you recognise this face?’
Angelina stared at the screen. A man’s shoulders and head were captured there: gaunt, though not sickly. Well groomed, but not overtly handsome. His eyes seemed to bear the lines of experience, and while he didn’t look particularly sage or motivated, there was something unsettling in his stare.
Angelina had never seen him before.
‘Me neither,’ Thomás added as Angelina shook her head in the negative.
Ben’s reaction, however, was altogether different.
‘That’s . . . Dr Durré. Right? I remember the face.’ Heinrich nodded. Ben continued, ‘We worked together at the Archives for a few months. Back before he was . . .’
‘Sacked,’ Heinrich said sternly. ‘For gross violations of professional ethics and misconduct.’
Ben merely nodded again. From the look on his face, Durré was the last person he’d expected to have brought to his attention here.
‘Since that time,’ Heinrich continued, ‘let’s just say that he’s collected a rather different assortment of colleagues. He appears to have been royally pissed off at having been kicked out of the establishment, and his new companions all have that trait in common. None of them quite fits in with a wholly above-board outlook on life.’
Major Heinrich reached down to his keyboard and entered a few commands, then used the arrow keys to cycle through a series of additional photographs. He announced the names as the images came up on the screen facing Angelina, Ben and Thomás.
‘Ridolfo Passerini, age twenty-seven, a man with an unimpressive background and a few tags from his juvenile record, mostly relating to retaliatory acts against those who mocked him for his facial deformities.’ The headshot was from a CCTV camera, grainy and black-and-white, but the deformities were still evident.
‘André Durré, age twenty-four, and Emil’s son,’ Heinrich continued as the next image flashed on to the display. A young man, slender and well dressed, with magazine-worthy good looks. ‘An intimate friend of Mr Passerini. Never seems to have excelled at much. Lived with his mother in Belgium until a few years ago. Came under his father’s wing, and since then has been picked up on a string of petty crimes. No charges that stuck.’
Angelina was frozen in place. ‘It’s them,’ she said, her left hand reaching out of its own accord and grabbing Ben’s. ‘Those are the two men who shot at us in St Peter’s Square. I recognise the one with the deformed face.’
Whether in conformation or solace, Ben squeezed her hand back.
‘Indeed,’ Heinrich confirmed. ‘We caught that bit on video. Ironically, in a way it was your choosing to leave our custody and getting yourselves shot at a second time that helped us determine these men’s identities and forge links back to Durré.’ He permitted a moment of silence.
‘There are others,’ he eventually continued. A finger hit the keyboard and a new face appeared on the monitor. ‘Bartolomeo Scarsi, a man with a background in civic engineering who went into civic thievery instead.’ Another finger press, and another headshot. ‘Yiannis Nikolaidis. We just managed to get his identity secured a few minutes ago. No details yet, but I’m quite sure it will fit within the general profile of all these men with whom Emil Durré has been surrounding himself.’
‘This is amazing work,’ Ben said, his eyes still fixed on the screen and his hand still encapsulating Angelina’s. ‘You’ve found all these men so quickly.’
‘Except we haven’t actually found them,’ Heinrich answered. ‘Any of them. All we’ve been able to do is link them together. The homes of each have been checked out by the Polizia di Stato, but all of them have been empty. Look like they haven’t been lived in for months.’ Heinrich stood a centimetre taller. ‘It appears for all the world like the whole lot of them have gone underground. Getting ready for something.’
Suddenly Angelina felt the temperature of Ben’s hand drop. In an instant it was cold and clammy.
‘CE 937 LK.’ Ben spouted out the numbers and letters robotically.
Major Heinrich peered into his suddenly distant eyes. ‘Excuse me, Dr Verdyx?’
‘CE 937 LK,’ Ben repeated again, then, after squeezing Angelina’s hand, let it go. He leaned over Heinrich’s desk and grabbed a pen, jotting the number down on to the edge of a piece of paper next to the computer. ‘This may help you to find them. It’s the number plate of the car that two of these men,’ he pointed to the monitor, ‘were sitting in when St John’s burst into flame. We spotted them there, and saw them drive away.’
Heinrich picked up the page on which Ben had written the number, looked it over, then passed it silently to a nearby officer who was close enough to have been in earshot and clearly knew what to do with it.
‘We’ll check it out,’ Heinrich said as the other Guardsman walked away, ‘but they’ll surely have ditched the car by now. What’s most important is that we figure out exactly what it is they’re planning to do next. This all may not have started as terrorism, but they’ve just set fire to four of the most magnificent structures in Rome. We don’t know yet if anyone was inside, but we’ve escalated from dyeing a river to shooting at citizens and burning down cathedrals. Whatever’s next, wherever it takes place, could be a lot worse.’
Angelina took a step closer to his desk. ‘We may not know the what,’ she said boldly, ‘but we definitely know the where. And what’s more, we know the when.’
Heinrich stiffened, his eyes an urgent question mark.
Angelina turned to Thomás. The folded page containing the full text of the prophecy was still in his pocket.
‘Show him.’