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.