The Dante Conspiracy, page 11
‘Actually, I think you can, Rudolf,’ Lombardi interjected, ‘otherwise we might decide that it would be a good idea for us to take a look at all the records of recent transactions here, and maybe suggest that the Guardia di Finanza takes a look as well. I’m quite sure you wouldn’t want the Grey Ghosts prowling around this place, would you?’
Massimo’s face fell, the worried looking making an immediate comeback.
‘You’re in a win-win situation here,’ Perini said softly. ‘If we find nothing, we’ll tear up the agreement. If we find something, the Palazzo Pitti will get international publicity and have a magnificent exhibit you can either display or sell. And, as Cesare said, we’d hate to cause any problems here, but it does seem to us that something’s not quite right in this building, and we would be failing in our duty as police officers if we didn’t investigate it. A finder’s fee would give us just the right amount of joint amnesia.’
Massimo stared down at his desk for a moment. Then he looked up.
‘Ten per cent?’ he asked.
Perini nodded, and the director turned to his computer keyboard and typed something rapidly. Then he printed it and passed the sheet across the desk.
‘Is that satisfactory?’
Perini looked at the typed words carefully and nodded.
‘That’s just what we wanted,’ he said. ‘Two copies please, and sign them both. Then we can go and see if we’re right.’
Chapter 27
The chest was on display, kind of, tucked into a corner of one of the galleries, with the lid closed. Beside it was a full-colour picture of the painting, together with a statement by some unidentified art expert that reiterated and expanded on the doubts Massimo had already explained to them.
In the foreground of the painting was an unmistakable Christ figure, looking out of the picture, right hand raised in benediction, and below it an inscription in Latin that was helpfully translated on the accompanying description. The Latin read ‘Forgiveness of all sins transports the spirit from Hell to Paradise’.
‘Now that could almost have been lifted straight out of The Divine Comedy,’ Perini said.
‘Dante,’ Massimo supplied automatically. ‘Yes, I suppose it could. Certainly very much the same sentiment. And that, obviously, is the image that’s troubled art critics over the centuries. I must confess I’d never thought about Dante in connection with this object, but of course he and Giotto were contemporaries, so perhaps this picture is an indication that the two men knew each other, and that Giotto painted this picture to please Dante, or perhaps to make the point that he was perhaps beginning to doubt his faith. Because that part of the picture is quite unambiguous.’
He pointed at the background of the picture, where a figure wearing the ecclesiastical robes of a Pope was being led away by two demons. They were dragging him towards a yawning opening that was presumably intended to represent the gates of Hell, where a figure that was unmistakably the devil was waiting for him, an expression of eager anticipation on his face.
‘I see what you mean,’ Lombardi said. ‘Not exactly a Vatican-friendly theme, is it? Is that Pope recognizable as Boniface VIII, or is it just a generic image?’
‘According to this, the surviving images of Boniface suggest that it could be him,’ Perini said, reading the last section of the accompanying description. ‘But it also points out that the whole picture is quite small, and the background image is obviously smaller still, so it’s by no means certain.’
‘There’s a statue of Gaetani in the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo here in Florence,’ Massimo pointed out.
‘Who?’
‘Boniface VIII. His name before he became Pope was Benedetto Gaetani,’
Perini reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the paper on which he’d written the verses he’d been trying to interpret.
‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘There’s a reference here to “Gaetani’s bane”, but I had no idea that could have meant the Pope.’
‘What is that, inspector?’ Massimo asked, pointing at the paper.
‘It’s some verses we’ve been trying to understand, which are clearly something to do with Dante.’
Briefly, Perini outlined what had happened in and around Florence over the previous few days.
‘Interesting,’ Massimo said, when Perini finally paused for breath. ‘Dante certainly had no love for the Pope. In his poem he consigns Boniface to Hell for simony, and that particular Pope was certainly one of the most un-Christian the Church has yet produced. He had a long-running feud with the Colonna family that ended when he demolished their home city of Palestrina, after it had surrendered to him, and killed over six thousand civilians in the process. He also imprisoned and quite probably killed his predecessor on the Throne of St Peter, and of course he orchestrated the victory of the Black Guelphs in Florence, which was the source of Dante’s personal argument with him.’
‘So what’s this “Gaetani’s bane” thing?’ Lombardi asked.
‘I have no idea,’ Perini said, ‘but it really must be something to do with Pope Boniface. The line from the verses reads: “By his hand the masterpiece lies below Gaetani’s bane”.’ He paused briefly, then finished the thought. ‘I wonder if that line is making a deliberate literal reference, using the word “below” in its common, everyday meaning. In other words, the relic is hidden in the chest but underneath this bane thing.’
He looked at the chest, considering.
‘Has this ever been properly examined? Checked for any hidden compartments, I mean?’
Massimo shook his head.
‘I doubt it. It’s just a plain wooden chest, and of importance only because of the painting that’s inside it. There would be no need for anyone to do any other checks on it.’
‘So how about we do that right now?’ Perini said, taking a couple of steps forward. ‘Have a proper look at it.’
‘Just a moment,’ Massimo said. ‘You’d better not damage it. That’s a very valuable exhibit.’
‘If I’m right about those verses, signor, what I think is inside that chest is probably more valuable than all the other exhibits in this palace, put together.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘I mean that somewhere inside that wooden chest could be not simply a hand-written copy of the Divina Commedia itself, but the original manuscript.’
Massimo’s eyes bulged.
‘You can’t be serious. We believe we’ve located all the early copies, years ago.’
‘No.’ Perini shook his head. ‘I didn’t say a copy. I said the original manuscript, written in Dante’s own hand.’
For a few moments, the director just stared at the detective.
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he said at last. ‘You really think it might be here?’
‘We’re perfectly serious,’ Perini replied. ‘Just as serious, in fact, as the criminals who have so far killed two men here in Florence and broken into Dante’s cenotaph looking for the same thing.’
‘I’m not surprised there’ve been deaths,’ Massimo said. ‘The value of that manuscript is incalculable. Anyone who knew about it would probably be prepared to kill to get their hands on it.’
Lombardi had been examining the wooden chest while Perini and Massimo had been talking, and now he looked up.
‘There seems to be a break in the lid,’ he said. ‘It looks like a join between two of the pieces of wood, but it’s a bit wider. And there are a couple of small slots in the lid on either side that could be intended to take the end of the blade of a knife or dagger.’
‘Let me see,’ Massimo instructed, and bent down to see for himself.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Somebody should have spotted these a long time ago.’
‘Maybe they did, and the cupboard’s bare,’ Perini said.
‘Only one way to find out.’
The sergeant reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a switchblade knife that he opened with a click.
‘We need something for the other side,’ he said.
Perini took out a small multi-tool, equipped with files and pliers and a host of other gadgets that he’d never used, selected one of the knife blades and slid the end of it into the slot that Lombardi had pointed out.
Almost immediately there was a faint sound, less a click than a creak, and the gap between the two pieces of wood on the lid of the chest opened a fraction wider. Lombardi inserted the point of his switchblade into the gap and levered slightly. There was another creaking noise and a small section of the wood forming the top of the lid opened up just a couple of centimetres.
Lombardi peered inside the hidden compartment and then glanced up at Perini, his eyes glinting with excitement.
‘There’s something in there,’ he said, and slid his fingers into the gap.
‘Stop!’ Massimo almost yelled. ‘Don’t touch it.’
Lombardi froze, the tips of his fingers a bare centimetre from the object he’d spotted, then he took a step back.
‘Why?’ he asked.
Massimo didn’t immediately reply, just bent down himself so he could look through the narrow opening.
‘It looks like a piece of parchment,’ he said, ‘and if you two are correct it’s been here for almost six hundred years, which means it needs careful handling. And that doesn’t include grabbing it with your fingers and dragging it out. Just wait a moment.’
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of thin white cotton gloves and put them on.
‘Can you open the gap a little wider?’ he asked Lombardi, who obliged by levering the wooden panel up another three or four centimetres. Then all three men could clearly see the light brown piece of parchment that lay inside.
Delicately, Massimo took hold of either side of it and lifted it out of the recess. He turned it so that it was upright and gave it a very delicate tap with the tip of one of his fingers. A small cloud of brownish dust drifted off it, and he laid it down carefully on a shelf near the wooden chest.
There were lines of text visible on the parchment, and while Perini and Lombardi watched, almost holding their breath, the director scanned what was written on it.
After a couple of minutes he straightened and looked at them.
‘The bad news from your point of view,’ he said, ‘is that this has nothing at all to do with the Divina Commedia, though it’s certainly something that Dante knew about and had in his possession. What you’ve found in that chest is what the person who wrote those verses described as “Gaetani’s bane”, and it’s pretty explosive stuff.’
Chapter 28
‘Or at least,’ Massimo amended, ‘it would have been explosive at the end of the fourteenth century, but it’s rather less so now.’
Perini made an impatient gesture, and the director continued, explaining what he’d read.
‘It’s written in Latin, which is what you’d expect, and the document definitely originated in the Vatican. I haven’t read all of it, but I can quite see why Dante loathed Boniface as much as he obviously did, quite apart from the fact that the Pope had orchestrated the take-over of Florence by the Black Guelphs and, indirectly, caused Dante’s own exile from the city of his birth.’
Massimo pointed at the parchment.
‘That wasn’t written by Dante, or by Boniface, but by a young priest who held a position at the Vatican, and it’s a sort of confession, I suppose. His name was Timor, and he had become a personal assistant to Benedetto Gaetani when he was still a cardinal. If this document is accurate, and I have no reason to assume that it isn’t, he became rather more than that. Timor claims that Gaetani seduced him and that he was regularly sodomised by the cardinal. What’s not clear is whether or not this was done by Gaetani for purely sexual reasons, or as part of a longer-term plan, because at some point the cardinal presented Timor with an ultimatum. Either he assisted Gaetani in a scheme he had concocted, or the cardinal would ensure that the young priest was dismissed from his position in the Vatican for moral turpitude and sexual deviance.’
‘Wouldn’t that have been just as dangerous for Gaetani?’ Perini asked. ‘As the other party in the relationship, I mean?’
‘Probably not. By that stage he was a very ambitious senior cardinal and exerted considerable power in the Roman curia, and he could have played the innocent, claiming that Timor had approached him rather than the other way round. Just as it does now, the Church would have closed its ranks then to protect its own, so I think Gaetani would have been safe enough.’
‘So what was his plan? Why did he need this man Timor at all?’
Massimo glanced again at the parchment.
‘I said Gaetani was powerful and ambitious, and what he wanted more than anything else was to occupy the Throne of St Peter, and he’d hatched a plan to ensure that the then incumbent would leave as soon as possible.’
‘And who was that?’ Lombardi asked. ‘On the off-chance that I might have heard of him,’ he added, as Perini looked at him.
‘His name was Pietro Angelerio, and he took the name Celestine V as Pope in August 1294, after the papal throne had been vacant for over two years. He was a former monk and a hermit who had founded the Celestine Order fifty years earlier, in 1244, but he wasn’t actually a lot of good as pontiff, and resigned after just over five months in office. The general impression was that he hated the pomp and ceremony of being the head of the Church and wanted nothing more than to resume his solitary existence. But Gaetani obviously took the view that Celestine needed a good push, just in case he refused to jump. So he made Timor his instrument, and had the young monk hide himself away in Celestine’s chambers. Timor was instructed to imitate the voice of God when the Pope was on the verge of dropping off to sleep, and tell him repeatedly that the will of God was for him to abdicate. That, at least, is what this confession by Timor claims.’
‘It sounds as if it worked,’ Perini commented.
‘Yes. And you could argue that what happened next more or less proves that Gaetani had something to do with it. Celestine had ruled from Naples, but as soon as Gaetani had been elected as Boniface VIII, he ordered his predecessor to be seized and brought to Rome. Celestine escaped and hid out in a forest – he was man of eighty, by the way – and then made his way to Sulmona, to the monastery which had become the head of the Celestine Order. But he was soon forced to flee from that sanctuary as well, and was recaptured on the orders of Gaetani, who had him imprisoned in a castle in Campagna, and he died there about ten months later. It’s possible, maybe even probable, that he didn’t die a natural death, but was murdered on the direct orders of the new Pope. If he had been, it certainly wouldn’t have been the first – or the last – murder Boniface was responsible for.’
‘He sounds like a nasty piece of work,’ Perini said.
Massimo nodded.
‘He was definitely one of our less attractive pontiffs. He also then systematically reversed just about every decision and decree his predecessor had made. But you could argue that Celestine had the last laugh, because he was canonized in 1313 as Saint Peter Celestine, whereas Boniface was actually tried for heresy after his death. He also later suffered the indignity of having his body exhumed.’
‘Right,’ Lombardi said. ‘We know what that is, but it’s not The Divine Comedy, and it’s actually got nothing to do with it. That’s all we’re really interested in. So where is it?’
‘And that,’ a new voice said from the end of the gallery, ‘is a very good question. All of you, stay exactly where you are.’
Chapter 29
The three men, the two detectives and the director of the Palazzo Pitti, had been so engrossed in their examination of the ancient parchment and its ramifications that they hadn’t heard the stealthy approach of the new arrivals, three men all wearing dark suits, two of them carrying semi-automatic pistols fitted with suppressors. Both weapons were held in their out-stretched hands, and pointed straight at the small group standing beside the wooden chest. The other man was standing a little way behind them, with no weapon evident, though that didn’t mean he was unarmed. He was heavily built, with a mane of silver-grey hair, and exuded an air of authority and dominance.
Perini was the first to recover. He turned very slowly to face the men, his hands at his sides, being careful not to make a threatening move. He had never seen any of the men before, but he immediately guessed who two of them were.
‘We’re police officers,’ he said, ‘and I’d strongly advise you to lower your weapons right now. If you kill or wound one of us, the police will never stop looking for you. Whatever you’re being paid to do this, it isn’t worth it.’
‘You have no idea what I’m paying these men,’ the man standing behind the two with the pistols stated, ‘but I can assure you it’s enough. And I’m what you might call an equal-opportunity employer, so I don’t care who they kill. One bullet, one body, no problem. Policeman or professor, it makes no difference to me.’
‘But you didn’t even use a bullet on Bertorelli, did you?’ Perini asked. ‘Wasn’t he worth it?’
‘There was no need,’ Guido replied. ‘The garrotte was silent and quick, and he didn’t suffer. At least, he didn’t suffer as he died.’
‘And now this is the end-game,’ Marco said. ‘You aren’t the only people who can crack a simple code and, just like you, Stefan here worked out that the manuscript had to be in that chest.’
‘How did you even know the chest existed?’ Massimo asked, a distinct tremor in his voice.
‘That was the easy bit,’ Stefan said. ‘It was listed in the guide book for the Palazzo Pitti, together with a most helpful description. Once I’d worked out that the relic had to have been sent to Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, it was fairly obvious where it had to be. Then it was just a matter of working out which of the various objects he acquired early in the fourteenth century was most likely to contain it. That chest was really the only choice.’
