Jonathan Rabb - The Book of Q

Mendravic glanced at him quickly. “What?”

“I’d need a phone to make sure,” answered Pearse, the knobs quickly proving useless; he sat back and stared out at the empty horizon. “So unless we happen to pass a McDonald’s somewhere out here, you’ll have to settle for a best guess.”

“I’m not much for fast food,” said Mendravic, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a tiny cellular phone. “Probably could have traded it for one of those NATO trucks back there. Maybe two.” With one eye on the road, he flipped it open and pressed several buttons. “I piggyback onto the NATO satellite linkups from time to time.” He handed it to Pearse. “Just enter the number.”

Pearse knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. Doing as he was told, he fished a piece of paper from his pocket. “By the way,” he asked as he dialed, “how did you know I was in that tent?”

Mendravic laughed to himself. “Next time, keep your fingers in side the flap, not outside.”

Angeli’s machine picked up, her message brief. A trip to Paris. Research. She’d be back in a week. “It’s Ian Pearse-”

The machine disengaged. “Do you have the ‘Hodoporia’?”

Pearse didn’t recognize the voice. “Let me speak with the professor.”

“Do you have the ‘Hodoporia’?” Pearse remained silent. It was several moments before the question came again.

“Have you found what they want?” Tired, clearly frightened, it was Angeli.

“Thank God,” said Pearse. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve been better. They want to know if you have the parchment.”

“I will. Soon. Have they-”

“ How soon, Father?” The man was back on the line.

“Put her on the phone.” This time, it was the other end that chose not to answer. “It’ll take a lot longer if you keep sending people out after me.”

There was a momentary pause. “Say again.”

“The four men you sent to find me in Kukes,” Pearse answered. “They didn’t get what they came for.”

Another pause, then the sound of muffled conversation in the background. Pearse thought he heard a second phone dialing. It was nearly a minute before the man answered. “Describe these men.”

The tone on the line spoke volumes. The men in Rome were as much in the dark about his recent assailants as he was. They had sent no one.

No swagger. No menace. No Vatican.

The question remained: Where had they come from? And who had sent them?

“Describe them,” came the repeated order.

Pearse waited. “Keep the professor safe.” He then pulled the phone from his ear and flipped it shut. He handed it to Mendravic.

“So?” he asked.

Pearse let his head fall back, the pounding subsiding. “Not the best guess.”

It was after seven by the time the limousine deposited Ludovisi back on Via Condotti, his steps unsteady-to anyone nearby, a man clearly worse for the wine. The street had mellowed since his hasty departure, strings of multicolored Christmas lights hanging overhead to lend the place a kind of festival atmosphere. The sneers of boutiques had given way to the clownish smiles of gelato carts and rose stands, as always, the strains of an ill-tuned guitar echoing from somewhere on the Spanish Steps. Ludovisi noticed none of it, clumsily maneuvering himself through the crowd, the outer rim of the piazza fountain a welcome relief as he stumbled his way down to it and sat. Staring into the gurgling water, he tried to shake the haze from his head, unable to recall the last three hours with any precision.

As far as he could remember, the evening had begun in silence, Kleist stone-faced to his questions, their destination kept hidden behind windows tinted to the point of impenetrability, only the car’s speed-too fast for the city streets-giving anything away. Somewhere on the outskirts of town. A villa perhaps. Kleist had finally offered him a drink-in the car, at the villa-he couldn’t remember. Brandy, scotch, it made no difference now. The light-headedness had followed. He recalled something of an underground garage, a set of stairs, a rather grand library.

Once inside, they had thrown a barrage of papers at him, some to be signed, others simply to be held, each immediately retrieved by Kleist. Computer discs, as well. Endless questions about account numbers, funds deposited, all of it streaming by in an ever-growing fog.

By the time they had taken him back to the garage, he’d required a man on either side to help him down the stairs. The ride back to town had passed in a disjointed series of words and faces.

With a sudden spasm, he dropped his head between his knees and vomited. It only made his head ache all the more. A second wave followed, most passersby moving off as quickly as possible, one or two trying to offer some help, a collision of voices and hands swimming in slow motion in front of him. Ignoring them, he reached into his jacket pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his mouth; instead, he pulled out two cards, identical to the ones he had tossed from the window at 201. He stared down at them, unable to gain his focus. I … destroyed these . And yet here they were, whole. What the hell is going on? Nausea gave way to fear.

Without warning, the left side of his neck constricted, a sudden twinge in his arm. At the same moment, his head began to convulse, more of the vomit curling up through his throat, his body slumping to the cold stone below. Somewhere within the pain, he heard shouts, whistling. Nothing registered, his body no longer his to control.

By the time the ambulance arrived, Arturo Ludovisi had been dead for over six minutes, the cards still clutched in his hand.

Shkoder came and went with a quick stop for gas, no letup in the rain, the car managing the border just as the guard had promised. The various passports and transit cards Mendravic had produced hadn’t hurt their chances, either-Albanian migrant-worker ID required no pictures.

“So this book, the one in Visegrad, it will do what for them?” asked Mendravic, still trying to piece things together.

“Not really sure,” answered Pearse, his attention on the final quintet of the Ribadeneyra entries. He’d been struggling with them for over an hour. “Whatever it’s supposed to do for them, they’re very eager to get their hands on it.”

“And what you’re doing there”-Mendravic nodded toward the small black book-“that’s going to tell us where we go?”

Pearse hummed in response, not really having heard the question. He continued to stare at the words, bits and pieces he had scribbled on the page, countless little circles of crossed-out letters, words on top of words, side by side in odd configurations.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that Ribadeneyra’s “quaestio lusoria” was far more complex than simply a series of arcane anagrams. His first stab at entry number two, during his second night at Kukes, had made that clear. There had been nothing to it that even remotely hinted at an anagram. The same held true for numbers three through five, each of them either too long or too short to make even the most subtle reconfigurations provide an answer. It was only when he had moved on to number six that he’d seen the pattern. Here, again, was an intricate yet solvable anagram. Seven through ten, impenetrable. Eleven, doable. Every fifth one. It had suddenly dawned on him what he was looking at. As with the “Perfect Light” letters, the entries here held to the Manichaeans’ predilection for divisions within divisions, and always in sets of five. In the scroll, it had been through the prophetic ascents; here, Ribadeneyra had managed it through the distinct types of wordplay. Five categories, five of each kind. The question remained: Aside from the anagrams, what sorts of manipulations would the other four categories require?