When I kneel, I see the pry marks on the iron safe.
Against this safe, though, no crowbar had a prayer. It weighs as much as a man and has been bolted to the floor.
The combination is the Bible verse in which Jesus established the papacy: first gospel, sixteenth chapter, eighteenth verse. You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Despite being battered, the mechanism is silky and the hinges make no sound. Ugo bought this safe to protect the manuscripts for his exhibit, and protect them it did.
Everything inside is familiar. Two months ago, when he was stranded in Turkey, Ugo told me to lock up the manuscripts he didn’t need. The leftovers; the runts. But among them is one new jewel—a cheap, bonded-leather notebook that I’ve seen Ugo carry with him almost everywhere. I wonder if this is what the intruder came to find: the research diary containing Ugo’s notes.
When I open it, a photo slips out. Seeing it, I feel my stomach clench. The man in the photo is lying on a tile floor. He appears to be dead.
A priest. A middle-aged Roman Catholic with fine, dark hair and one limpid green eye. His nose is broken. Where his left eye should be, there is a black bulge slotted like a coin purse. The jaw beneath it is covered with blood. Pinned under his body, as if he was pushed down on top of it, is a sign written in a language I don’t understand. PRELUARE BAGAJE. Only some flicker of animation in his green eye suggests he isn’t dead, just badly hurt. On the back of the photo, someone has written:
Be careful who you trust.
I feel dizzy. The air hums.
“Peter!” I shout.
I close the photo back into the diary. From the corkboard I take the diagram Ugo made.
“Peter, we’re leaving!”
I shut the safe. Lock it. But the diary goes into my cassock. We won’t be back here again.
Peter is waiting for me on the other side of the screen. “What’s wrong, Babbo?” he says, still holding the suet in his hand.
I lift him in my arms and carry him out the door. I don’t tell him about the picture. I don’t tell him that I recognize the bloody priest.
* * *
AN UNFAMILIAR MAN is talking to a gendarme in the hall. He glances up at the sound of Ugo’s apartment door being locked, but we’re already slipping down another staircase. The older wings of the palace are corkscrewed with these private passages.
“What are we doing?” Peter says.
He’s too young to know these back ways, but he knows something’s wrong.
“We’ll be out soon,” I say.
The spiral staircase is narrow and unlit. In the darkness, the image of the bloodied priest returns to me. I haven’t seen his face in years. Michael Black, my father’s former assistant. Another Secretariat man.
Peter murmurs something indistinct. I’m too lost in thought to ask him to repeat himself.
So Ugo was not the first to be attacked. I wonder if Michael survived.
Peter pushes impatiently at my chest.
“What? ” I demand.
“I said, why is that man following us?”
I freeze. In the tight cylinder of the staircase, there are footsteps.
CHAPTER 10
I BEGIN DOUBLE-STEPPING, BUT the footsteps quicken. With a boy in my arms, there’s no higher gear. I feel Peter clutching my neck, forcing his face into the crook of my throat.
Out of the murk, a shape descends. A silhouette nearly as tall as Simon. He’s wearing layman’s clothes.