Simon would sooner sleep on a street corner outside of Termini station. But this is the price of all this uncharacteristic pleading. He’s shown Lucio who holds the cards.
Simon nods, and Lucio raps his knuckles twice on the desktop. We’re done. Don Diego returns to see us to the elevator.
“Should I send someone for your bags?” Diego needles Simon.
They will be suitemates for the next five nights. Warden and prisoner. But there is momentary solace in the hollow of Simon’s eyes. Relief. He won’t take the bait. When the metal door slides open, Peter rushes inside, eager to push the elevator button. Before Diego can find another way to prod Simon, Peter and I are descending.
CHAPTER 8
IT WAS SHORTLY after my dinner at Ugo’s apartment that I helped him break into the Vatican Library to see the Diatessaron. “Meet me at my apartment at four thirty,” he’d said. “And bring a pair of gloves.”
At four thirty I was at the apartment. Ugo arrived a quarter-hour later. In his hands were two plastic bags from the Annona, the Vatican grocery store. One of them bore the unmistakable contours of a bottle of alcohol.
“To calm the nerves,” he said, winking. But his brow was damp and his eyes were uneasy.
Once we were inside his flat, he drank shot after shot of Grappa Julia. “Tell me something,” he said. “Do you know how to find your way around down there?”
Down there: below his apartment, in the library.
“How could I?” I said testily. He’d given me the impression that he’d done this before. That I would just be following. After all, just to get in the front door of our library required an application with references from accredited scholars. To see a book required paperwork. To fetch it required a library employee, since no patron was ever allowed to enter the stacks.
“If we already know where the manuscript is,” I asked, “then can’t we just take it off the shelf and read it?”
His other supermarket bag contained a trove of equipment. Two flashlights, an electric camping lantern, a box of latex gloves, a loaf of bread, a bag of pine nuts, a pair of slippers, a notebook, and what appeared to be a loop of wire the size of a child’s tennis racket. All of which he was proceeding to bury in a duffel bag.
“Oh, we can take it off the shelf,” he said. “That isn’t the problem.” He checked his watch. “Now step lively, Father Alex. We need to hurry.”
I pointed to his bag. “We won’t get past the guards at the front desk carrying that.”
He scoffed. “Don’t be silly. There’s a steam duct that vents through a window on the second floor. It’s been out of commission for years.”
I stared at him.
Ugo chuckled and gripped my arm. “Kidding, kidding. Now stop worrying and come on.”
* * *
HE HAD A FRIEND on the inside. An old French priest whose office stood in a forgotten corner of the building. The library closed in ten minutes, but Ugo’s apartment was so close that we reached his friend in under two.
Ugo stopped me outside the office and said, “Wait here a moment.”
He went in alone but didn’t shut the door completely.
“Ugolino,” I heard the man say anxiously in his French accent, “they’ve found out about you.”
“Doubtful,” Ugo replied.
“Security went door-to-door today, warning us to report any unfamiliar persons.”
Ugo didn’t answer.