The Turin Shroud Secret (28 page)

An eyeball stares down at him.

Craxi’s heart jumps.

‘Move back.’ The voice is cold and insistent.

He edges away.

Ephrem puts down the high-speed battery-powered drill. ‘This hole will give you air. If what you’ve told me is true, I will
call the police and they will come and find you. If it is not, then when I have finished with your wife, I will come back
for you.’

The monk bags up the tools he’d bought in Turin after Craxi had given him the slip in the subway. He leaves the old church
and returns to the rental car. He’ll need different tools for the next part of the mission. Very different ones.

BOYLE HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES

It takes four rings of the phone for JJ to track the tone to an upstairs room.

He places his own cell back in his trousers and examines the door in front of him. It’s cheap and insubstantial. A low-quality
block of painted plywood fitted with a barely decent lock. No match for the tyre iron he’s brought with him. He could easily
prise it open.

But not yet. He sits patiently on the floor outside and listens for movement. The phone most probably woke her. He needs her
to fall back to sleep. Needs her to be in a state of rest when he takes her.

JJ is waiting for the sound of her using the bathroom. The noise of a TV being put on or a kettle being boiled.

There is nothing. Forty minutes pass. Two thousand four hundred long seconds tick away, before he’s satisfied enough to wriggle
the fluted end of the tyre iron into the door jamb. He lets the metal chew slowly into the soft wood, nosing deeper into the
space where the edge of the door and the frame meet. The work is hard and sweat beads on his forehead. Finally, it is in the
right position. He’s satisfied he has enough purchase – sufficient leverage – to be able to force the door open. In one crisp
movement he jerks the iron to his left while ramming his right shoulder and hip against the door.

It bursts open. Bangs noisily against the wall. Certainly loudly enough to wake Harrison. He forgets about closing it and
rushes inside. The room is in darkness. There’s a bed and a couch and a window and a sink. No Jenny. He swings round. Another
door. He pushes it open.

A tiny bathroom. She’s not there. JJ inches his way back to the splintered door and closes it. The place has paper-thin walls.
Chances are people next door have heard him.

He flicks on the light. On the floor near the edge of the bed is her phone. She must have dropped it. Gone out without it.
An act of forgetfulness that has saved her life. For now.

TURIN

It’s a long time since former soldier Roberto Craxi has been forced to lie in a pool of his own urine.

If memory serves him well it was twenty years ago in Naples. An anti-Camorra operation went wrong and he and his team got
trapped in a landfill site for almost an entire day. He killed three people in the gun battle that followed. And he’d dearly
like to kill again today.

The tomb that’s holding him seems escape-proof. He rolls onto his front, gets up on his knees and presses his back against
the heavy slab above him. It won’t budge.

Not an inch. His captor’s been gone some time now and Craxi knows exactly where he is and what he’s doing. It won’t take an
animal like him long to crack the man he’s visiting. A scientist with no guts. And when he does, he will know the truth. Know
Craxi held back on him. Delayed him.

Craxi takes in a deep lungful of air and once more painfully presses his back against the unyielding stone. He has to get
out.
Must
get out. Escape before it’s too late.

He who controls the present, controls the past.

He who controls the past, controls the future.

George Orwell

TURIN

Since he was a child, Mario Sacconi has slept with the window open. There’s something about being shut in that disturbs him
and keeps him awake. He feels stifled. Claustrophobic. It’s a habit that’s led to countless girlfriends complaining about
the freezing cold in his bedroom – but that’s never been a problem the handsome geneticist hasn’t been able to solve.

He went to bed last night with the elegant sash window open and a beautiful Brazilian intern grateful for his body heat. Dawn
is breaking now over the lush forest surrounding his home. As he opens his eyes in the pink light he realises what a terrible
mistake he’s made.

‘Buongiorno,’
says a man dressed head to toe in black at the foot of his bed.

‘Vaffanculo!’
Sacconi tries to sit up. A slipknot tightens around his left wrist and then his right. He looks frantically for his lover.
‘Benedetta?’

‘In the bathroom,’ Ephrem nods behind him. ‘You’ll see her in a moment.’

Sacconi has read about intruders, how they sometimes get violent or sexual when confronted. Best stay calm and not rile them.
Don’t turn a simple housebreaking into something much uglier. ‘Look, I don’t want any trouble. Take whatever you want. The
keys to my Mercedes are in my trousers on the chair over there. I have a safe, jewellery and money. I’ll give you anything.’

The monk laughs. ‘Roberto Craxi.’

The name silences him.

‘Craxi is why I am here.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Dark eyes stare through his balaclava. ‘Yes, you do. You are Mario Sacconi. Craxi paid you money to do something you shouldn’t
have done. You abused your power, the gifts God and science gave you.’

‘No. No – you’re wrong.’

The look in the monk’s eyes says he’s sure he isn’t. He strides away from the bed and enters the bathroom. He returns seconds
later with the naked girl in his arms and drops her on the bed next to Sacconi. Her hands and feet are tied together behind
her back. Thick parcel tape is wrapped around her mouth. Her eyes are wide with terror.

‘Roberto Craxi paid you to test samples he stole from the holy shroud. I want the results of that test and any samples you
have left.’

‘You’re mistaken. I swear to God, I don’t know what you mean.’

A punch explodes in Sacconi’s face. He wails. His nose is broken. Blood is smeared across his mouth and cheeks.

‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain.’ The monk reaches into black cargo pants and produces what looks
like a thin, oblong case beautifully covered in mother-of-pearl. The snap of a seven-inch stiletto blade ends any ambiguity
about its contents. He holds the steel in front of the geneticist’s eyes, makes sure Sacconi sees its sharpness, then grabs
Benedetta around the neck and hauls her body across her lover’s. Ephrem pulls her hair back so her eyes stare into Sacconi’s.
So her fear connects with his. ‘Now. Will you tell me about the tests you carried out?’

Still Sacconi hesitates.

The monk puts the tip of the blade into the soft skin below the girl’s right eye. He studies the scientist’s face. Sees instantly
that she doesn’t mean anything to him. There is no hero in the man, no bond of love between them. He pushes her away. Hears
her roll off the bed and hit the hard wooden floor.

Ephrem puts a hand over Sacconi’s mouth then calmly runs the point of the stiletto through his left cheek.

The scientist’s muffled screams last almost a minute.

Ephrem withdraws the blade slowly. Lets a curled droplet of blood drip from the tip of the steel into Sacconi’s eyes. ‘I am
going to ask you one final time to tell me about the tests you did for Craxi.’

‘Wake up, my friend.’

Nic hears the voice but isn’t together enough to answer.

‘We need to get moving. Come on.’ Fabio Goria places a hand on the detective’s shoulder.

Karakandez raises himself on his elbows. Blinks at the daylight as the private investigator draws back the curtains. ‘I’m
awake, just give me a minute to get my shit together.’

‘I am making coffee and eggs, then we run.’ Goria wanders out of the room. ‘We don’t have long.’

Nic staggers to the bathroom, feeling half-drunk as he steps into the shower. Afterwards, he towels dry and dresses in a clean,
soft cotton, baggy blue plaid shirt, plain blue fleece hoodie and blue Gap jeans. He grabs his BlackBerry from the bedside
cabinet and types out a mail to Luogotenente Cappelini.

Carlotta,

I’m not going to be at the hotel this morning for you to pick me up. I got a little drunk last night with some guys I met
and we ended up across town. I’ll give you a call this afternoon and arrange a meet.

Thanks.

Hope you have a good day.

Nic.

He hits send and then enters the open-plan kitchen where Goria is sliding scrambled eggs and fatty bacon out of a pan. ‘Help
yourself to coffee.’ He waves a hand towards a glass jug of freshly ground brewing on its own hot plate. ‘There’s milk and
cream in the fridge.’

‘You want some?’

‘Si.
Just black.’

Nic takes two white mugs off a shelf and pours coffee. They sit on leather-topped benches at a long junk wood table, looking
out on a functional garden. It’s a single man’s yard. No flowers, no neat areas, mainly decking and a barbecue area should
there ever be opportunity for such a thing.

They didn’t find time to eat last night and now Nic is hungrier than he thought. ‘The eggs are good.’

‘Grazie.
Italian boys are taught to cook well.’

‘One day you’ll make someone an excellent wife.’

‘You are very funny. Eat quickly. We need to go before we end up regretting even the short sleep.’

Both men are exhausted but they know they are in a race against time. If whoever took Craxi has obtained the same information
that his wife Erica gave them, then it is only a matter of time before they get to the scientist Craxi used to analyse DNA
from the Shroud.

By six forty-five Nic and Fabio are in the Fiat heading south-east down Via Antonio Sciesa and Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi. Just
after seven they join the eastern stretch of the Tangenziale Nord and make decent progress until they hit the tolls on the
road to Milan where a huge truck has
blown a tyre. Strips of shredded black rubber cover the autostrada.

It’s seven-fifteen when they come off at the Chivasso exit and twenty-five past when they quietly shut the doors of the Fiat
and walk to the small detached home on the outskirts of a giant estate.

‘The castle behind there,’ Fabio points over hedges to a distant palace of pinkish brick and green shuttered windows. ‘This
is Castagneto Po, the family home of Carla Bruni.’

Nic glances into the lavish grounds. ‘I guess after living somewhere like that, you have to marry a president to keep you
in the manner to which you are accustomed.’

‘But Sarkozy?’ Goria shrugs as they walk. ‘It is a mystery why a beautiful Italian should choose a French dwarf.’ He swings
open a black metal gate and they walk a gravelled drive of honey-coloured chips to a fine three-storey house with spectacular
views across the rolling Turin hills and surrounding vineyards.

The Italian nods to the black Mercedes SLK parked to one side. ‘The car is his. He is in.’

Nic reaches across his waistband and checks the gun he’d been given last night.

Goria lifts the giant brass ring hanging in the middle of the glossy black door and hammers it hard. He reaches inside his
jacket and pulls out a false ID. ‘Carabinieri! Signore Sacconi, open up!’

Nic heads round the back of the house. He peers closely through the ground-floor windows as he goes quickly round
and then circles back to the front. ‘There’s no sign of life but there is an open window on the second floor.’

Goria pockets the ID. He looks up at the drainpipes and trellis-work. He knows what’s expected of him.

CARABINIERI HEADQUARTERS, TURIN

Luogotenente Carlotta Cappelini feels like death warmed up. She’s been awake most of the night – not finally turning in until
she’d seen the car registered to the company of private investigator Fabio Goria pick Nic Karakandez up outside the American’s
hotel and enter the grounds of Goria’s home.

Now she’s back at work. Driving her desk. Reading reports from her surveillance team and discovering the American and his
new Italian friend have just rolled out of their gated retreat and made their way to a house out near Chivasso. She looks
at her computer and rereads the mail he sent her full of nonsense about a night on the town and a promise to call her later.
She taps his cell number into her desk phone and dials him for a second time.

‘Buongiorno,
Nic – this is Carlotta again. Please call me as soon as you can, I have some important information I want to share with you.’

She doesn’t. But she knows she has to establish contact
quickly or risk losing him completely. And that mustn’t happen. Not now. Not after last night’s events.

Captain Giorgio Fusco beckons her through the window of his office opposite her desk. It’s one of the perils of sitting within
his sight line. She drops what she’s doing and plods wearily his way. Pokes her head around his door. ‘Capitano?’

‘Come in.’ He gestures to a grey-suited man with cropped black hair sitting in the shadows of the room. ‘This is Paolo. He
is an ROS administrator, and a close friend.’

The man from the Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale nods and manages a polite
‘Ciao.’
His unblinking brown eyes show no interest in her.

Fusco walks over to the door and makes sure it’s tightly shut. ‘Roberto Craxi was seen in the centre of Turin.’

‘That’s not news, sir. We know he and his wife recently returned to their lodge.’

Paolo dips into his jacket pocket and produces a pack of colour stills that he fans out like a hand of cards. ‘We picked him
up on CCTV, using facial recognition software.’

She looks at the pictures. ‘What was he doing?’

‘Drawing money from a bank account we didn’t know he had and probably much more.’ Paolo peels off several shots. ‘By the time
we got operatives into the area, he’d gone.’