CHAPTER TWELVE
Cotton entered the Four Seasons in Milan. He’d driven the thirty miles south from Como in a little over an hour.
The time was approaching 1:00 P.M.
His mind still reeled at the loss of the documents.
Failure was not his style.
Before flying from Denmark yesterday he’d engaged in a little research. The general consensus seemed to be that any letters between Churchill and Mussolini would have involved an attempt by Churchill to either prevent or sever Italy’s alliance with Germany. Once he’d conquered Ethiopia in 1936, Mussolini had openly wanted to rekindle a friendship with Britain. He personally disliked Hitler and did not want to see Europe fall under Germany’s influence. But the British thought appeasing Hitler, and opposing Mussolini, was the better course, so they’d rebuffed his advances. Not until 1938 had Britain finally capitulated. But by then it was too late. Italy had already shifted toward Hitler.
Historical speculation on what might have been written between Churchill and Mussolini ran rampant. Unfortunately he hadn’t been able to read any of the letters inside the satchel. He’d planned on doing that once he returned to his hotel in Menaggio, even though the Brits had emphatically told him not to be so curious.
But what did they say about the best-laid plans?
He’d been able to change the tire, using the small spare the rental came equipped with, and he’d made it south without incident. The man who’d hired him waited in a sunny, elegant dining room that overlooked an inner courtyard. His name was Sir James Grant, presently of MI6, Great Britain’s famed foreign intelligence service. He hadn’t met or heard of Grant before yesterday, an urbane and elegant gentleman in his mid-fifties, with dark eyes that cast an expressionless quality typical of professional spies. He noticed that Grant wore the same three-button dark-blue suit with a vest from yesterday. Cotton had called ahead to say that he was on the way with an interesting story, specifically alerting his employer to the two bodies in the villa.
The hotel was impressive, a former convent located in the heart of Milan’s fashionable shopping district. Apparently British intelligence’s per diem for fieldwork was much more generous than the Justice Department’s. He stepped into the dining room, sat at the table, and explained more of what had happened.
Grant laughed at the bear. “That’s a new one. I’ve been at this for twenty years and never had an agent encounter that before.”
“Was the satchel real elephant skin?” he asked.
“It’s said Mussolini shot the animal himself. How many pages would you estimate were inside?”
“Fifty or so. But only eleven letters. I’m sorry about losing them. Whoever was there wanted that satchel.”
“After you called earlier, I sent a man north to investigate. He found the body inside, as you described, and it seems to be the villa’s groundskeeper. We also found the dead man upstairs. Shot twice with one arm shredded. Quite horrible, my man said. Then he located the owner, hanging from a tree in the woods north of the villa.” Grant paused. “His arms had been pulled up behind his back, his shoulders separated, a bullet to the head.”
Cotton sat back in the chair. “Have you identified the dead guy who attacked me?”
“Not yet. His fingerprints are not in any database. Which is unusual, to say the least. But we’ll learn who he is.” Grant motioned at a plate of pastries on the table. “Please. Help yourself. I ordered those in case you were hungry.”
He caught the diversion, a way to move things off to another subject. Stephanie Nelle was known to use the same tactic. But since he was hungry, he helped himself to a couple of croissants. A waiter sauntered over and he ordered a glass of orange juice.
“Fresh-squeezed?” he asked the waiter.
“But of course.”
He smiled. Perfect. Thanks to his mother, who’d discouraged him from both, he’d never acquired a taste for alcohol or coffee. But fresh-squeezed juice? Especially from those tart and tangy Spanish oranges?
That was the best.
The ring rested in his pocket. He decided to do a little hedging of his own and keep that tidbit to himself while he determined what this cagey Brit knew that he didn’t. But he did decide to share a little. “There were eleven letters between Churchill and Mussolini. Five were being sold to you. Maybe the other six had been offered to another buyer. He wanted five million euros from you. More, probably, from the other guy. So you both decided it was cheaper to steal them.”
“I agree, we were being played. I should not be surprised. The seller’s reputation does precede him.”
He enjoyed another of the pastries and pointed at the plate. “Those are good.”
“Do you know the story of the croissant?”
More hedging.
He played along and shook his head.
“In 1686 a baker was supposedly working through the night while the Turks lay siege to Budapest. He heard rumblings underground, beneath his store, and alerted officials. They discovered a Turkish attempt to tunnel under the city walls. Of course, the tunnel was promptly destroyed. As a reward, the baker asked only that he been given the sole right to bake crescent-shaped rolls commemorating the incident, the crescent being the symbol of Islam. Bread the masses could eat, devouring their enemy. And the croissant, which is French for ‘crescent,’ was born.”
Cotton buttered a fourth pastry.
“During the recent Syrian civil war,” Grant said, “Islamic fundamentalists banned Muslims from eating croissants. They cited the tale I just told you to support their action. They wanted no part of anything that celebrated a Muslim defeat.”
“You know that story from Budapest is bullshit.”
Grant chuckled. “No doubt. A total fiction. But it sounds delightful. Just like the story that Winston Churchill wanted to sell out Great Britain during World War II. Sounds good. Plays good. But it’s not real, either.”
“Then why were you willing to pay a fortune for those letters?”
“The Churchill family is tired of hearing lies. Our hope was that this would put the matter to rest.”
He pondered on that one a moment, considering what Matthew said in the Bible about naïveté. Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Proverbs seemed instructive, too. The simple inherit folly, but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.
Damn straight.
“Those lies about Churchill are over seventy years old,” he noted.
The waiter returned with his juice and he enjoyed a few sips.
Smooth and sweet.
“Definitely fresh-squeezed.”
“It’s the Four Seasons,” Grant said. “What did you expect?”
The waiter left.
“I expect the gentleman who hired me to be honest. Three men are dead. Your letters are gone. Yet you haven’t shown the slightest concern. Which means either, one, the letters are irrelevant. Two, there was something else you were after. Or three, both. I choose three. What’s your vote?”
No reply.
Time to play his hold card.
He found the ring in his pocket and laid it on the table. Grant stared a moment, before lifting it and closely examining the letters.
Cotton leaned in. “That came off the dead guy in the villa who attacked me.”
“Which you failed to mention, until this moment.”
He reached for a fifth croissant. “Yeah, I noticed that, too.”
“You took it off the corpse?” Grant asked.
“It’s my nature to be curious.”
Grant smiled. “I’m sure you’ve seen that the words can be read the same in every direction. Up. Down. Left. Right. It’s a palindrome. Sator. Arepo. Tenet. Opera. Rotas.”
“You know what it means? My Latin is a little rusty.”
“In its purest form, sator is ‘farmer, planter, originator.’ Arepo? Unknown. There is no such Latin word. Tenet means ‘hold, keep, preserve.’ Opera is ‘work, effort, deed.’ Rotas? ‘Wheels.’”
He assembled the meaning.
The farmer Arepo works wheels.
“It makes no sense,” he said.
“The full meaning of these words has been a matter of debate for centuries. No one has ever ascertained an accurate meaning. What we do know is that this palindrome once served as the personal mark of Constantine the Great.”
He’d recalled something similar from a few years ago.
The monogram of Charlemagne. A sign of royal identity, usually formed around combining initials. When Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, the pope bestowed on him a one-word name.
Carolus.
Charles the Great.
So a monogram had been designed around that label.
The one on the ring seemed far more complex, and came four hundred years before Charlemagne.
“What do you know of Constantine?” Grant asked.
His eidetic memory recalled some details. Constantine ruled the Roman Empire in the 4th century, defeating all challengers, uniting the throne under one ruler. He founded a new capital on the Bosphorus, where Europe met Asia, which became Constantinople, a city set apart from Rome, ushering in the Byzantine culture. He was also the only Roman ruler to ever have the Great attached after his name.
He pointed at the ring. “There’s etching inside.”
Grant looked. “The eight-pointed Maltese cross.”
“Can we get some bacon?” He was more hungry than he thought.
“Anything you like,” Grant said.
He needed time to think, so more food might do the trick. “Bacon and eggs would be terrific. The eggs over hard. I hate runny.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Though, being an Englishman, that’s probably an odd preference.”
Grant motioned for the waiter and placed the order, then turned back and stared at him across the table. “Have we both hedged enough?”
He agreed, time to drop the act. “You paid me an obscene fee, then sent me in there blind just to see what would happen.”
“And if that were true?”
“If I were still a Justice Department agent, I’d probably beat the living crap out of you.”
“And in your retirement?”
“It’s still up in the air.”
He allowed his words to settle in, staring out through the wall of glass to the hotel’s cloisterlike courtyard. Then he faced the Brit. “I’m going to eat my free breakfast, take my fifty thousand euros, and head home. As we like to say where I come from, I don’t have a dog in this fight.”
“What do you know of the Knights Hospitallers? Or, as they are called today, the Knights of Malta?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“Thankfully, I do.”
Sometime around 1070 a small group of merchants from Amalfi founded the Hospice of St. John the Almoner near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. They were Good Samaritans, stretcher bearers for pilgrims who’d survived the arduous journey to the Holy Land. Eventually they constructed hospitals across all of the land conquered by the Crusaders. In 1113 Pope Paschall II bestowed upon them papal legitimacy, their trademark habit a black surcoat with a cowl, an eight-pointed cross in white linen affixed to the left breast. By 1150 they had grown into soldier-monks, knights errant of the cross, becoming the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.
Their first duty always remained caring for the sick, but their second was tuition fifei. Defense of the faith. Interested parents would place their son’s name forward at birth and pay a large fee. Acceptance came at age eighteen. To be eligible then the young man had to be strong, well built, and fit enough to endure the life of a soldier.
And the pedigree had to be perfect.
In the beginning, an applicant had only to be legitimately born into a noble family. By the 14th century that evolved into both parents having to be of noble, land-owning gentry. A hundred years later applicants had to prove nobility in the male line back four generations. Eventually, by the 16th century, all four grandparents were required to be of noble stock. Passage money, what it took to support a knight for a year in the Holy Land, became the final initiation fee. Once anointed, each knight endured a year’s training, then swore to have faith, repent his sins, and live in humility, being merciful, sincere, wholehearted, and brave enough to endure persecution.
With the fall of the Holy Land in 1291, the age of the warrior-monk ended. The Knights Templar never grasped that change and faded in 1307. The Hospitallers adapted, keeping their primary mission charity but evolving from a land-based cavalry force to a sea power, conquering and taking Rhodes in 1310. They then became the Order of the Knights of Rhodes and acquired a new purpose.
Keeping both the Ottomans and the corsairs at bay.
After Constantinople fell in 1453, Rhodes became the last outpost of Christianity in the East. The knights acted as a buffer between the Latin-Christian Western world and the Eastern infidels. Their fighting ships and galleys dominated the Mediterranean, their white cross on a red matte striking fear into their enemies.
Members organized themselves into eight langues, one for Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Castile, England, Germany, and Aragon, which represented the major political divisions of the time. Those were further subdivided into bailiwicks and commanderies. The langues headquartered in auberges, where members lived and ate communally. Traditional national rivalries never faded, though, and led to regimental conflicts between the langues, but enforced discipline and a strong hand eventually forged the langues into a tight, cohesive fighting force.
In 1522 the Turks finally succeeded in retaking Rhodes.
The knights loaded their ships and left, drifting for seven years. In 1530 Charles V of Spain granted them Malta, and its twelve thousand inhabitants, in exchange for a single falcon, payable yearly to the viceroy of Sicily on All Saints’ Day.
The island had not been much of a prize. Just a chunk of limestone seven leagues long and four wide. Its stony soil was unfit for growing much other than cotton, figs, melons, and other fruits. Honey was its major export and main claim to fame. Just a few springs near the center was all the running water. Rain was the main supply. Wood was so scarce the locals used sun-dried cow dung for cooking. The south coast claimed no harbors, coves, or bays, the shore tall and rocky. The north coast was the opposite, with plenty of anchorage, including two fine harbors suitable for any fleet. Which was perfect, since the knights were a seafaring power. But the gift of an island was not merely gratuitous. Charles intended for them to employ their forces and arms against the perfidious enemies of the Holy Faith.
Which they did.
Becoming the Sovereign and Military Order of the Knights of Malta, exempt from civil duties and taxes, bowing to no authority save the pope.
There they stayed until 1798.
“Now they are Sovereign Military Hospitallers Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta,” Grant said. “The world’s oldest surviving chivalric order. Headquartered in Rome. The eight-pointed cross of St. John remains their emblem. Four barbed arrowheads, joined at the center, each point representing the eight beatitudes, the four arms symbolizing prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. Its whiteness is a reminder of purity.”
The waiter brought Cotton’s bacon and eggs. He pointed at the ring, which Grant still held. “Is that connected to the Hospitallers?”
“I believe it is.”
He ate his late breakfast, noticing the eggs had been fried perfectly. “So the dead guy could be a knight?”
“That’s my assumption.” Grant sipped his coffee. “You may not believe this, but I was genuinely hoping this was only about the letters. A part of me wanted it to be that simple. But in this business nothing is ever simple.” Grant paused. “The Hospitallers possess the largest, most extensive collection of Mussolini’s writings and personal belongings in the world. They’ve been secretly acquiring it for decades. A bit of an odd obsession, wouldn’t you say? But they refuse to confirm or deny anything. As they like to say, what they may or may not own is a private matter.”
“Like that stops MI6.” But he did connect the dots. “You think the Hospitallers were the ones after the Churchill letters?”
Grant reached into his inside jacket pocket and removed a cell phone. He punched the screen, then handed it over. On it, Cotton saw a man hanging from a rope, arms yanked up from behind, his neck angled over in death.
He handed the phone back. “The villa owner?”
Grant nodded. “When the Crusaders invaded the Holy Land, they became a brutal lot. They were fighting an enemy like none they had ever seen. The Arabs were tough, relentless, and unmerciful. To show their adversary that they could be equal to the task, they devised new means of torture and punishment.” Grant gestured with the phone. “One of those involved hanging their prisoners in this particular way. It became a trademark. So yes, I think the Knights of Malta are involved.”
Cotton kept enjoying his breakfast, waiting for the pitch.
“We need someone, other than us, to look into this,” Grant said. “That’s why I hired one of the best intelligence operatives in the world.”
He grinned. “Now you’re blowing smoke up my ass.”
“Just being honest. You do realize that there are people at MI6 who still hold a grudge your way.”
He knew what Grant was referring to. An incident that involved his son, Gary, and a former head of British intelligence. “I did what I had to do.”
“Which is exactly why I want you on this. I have a situation here, Cotton. One that may be wider than I first thought. I need your help. I’ll double your fee.”
Music to his ears and, luckily, he had a few days free. But he wanted to know more. “What do you want me to do?”
“Make contact with the Knights of Malta.” Grant laid the ring on the table. “Start with inquiring about why the dead man in that villa was wearing this. Then find out anything you can on their Mussolini collection. And I’m not particular on how you accomplish that objective.”
Which meant the local criminal codes did not have to be observed. But he had to ask, “Is that all I get from you? Pretty damn vague.”
“I would ask that you allow me the luxury of withholding further facts until I’m sure of a few matters. There is a possibility this might be nothing at all. That we are on the wrong trail.”
“Looking for what?”
Grant did not reply.
He shrugged. “Okay. For a hundred thousand euros, I can be a good bird dog. I’ll sniff around and see where it leads.”
“Excellent. Hopefully, I’ll have some clarity shortly that I can share.”
“Can I at least know what you’re waiting for?”
“A situation on Malta to resolve itself.”