Michael Cordy - The Source

Torino didn't smile or greet him, just tapped his watch. 'Let's keep this brief, Marco. I'm a busy man and I don't want my people to come looking for me.' He frowned. 'What happened in America? I thought you were meant to be good at this. The plan was to go in, get the information and leave, not to jeopardize Dr Kelly's work in case she hadn't finished it. I certainly didn't tell you to hurt anyone and get the police involved.'

Bazin couldn't meet his eye. 'You told me they'd be away for three weeks, Leo.'

'You will address me as "Father General".' He paused. 'They should have been away on holiday. The point is you were supposed to be discreet.'

'I was, Father General. I covered my face and left no trace. The police will assume I fled before I had a chance to take much. If they'd been away like you said no one would've known I was even there. But I had to use force to escape – or you wouldn't have got what you wanted. In the end, I took a few valuables to make it look like a normal burglary.'

For a while Torino said nothing, just glared at Bazin as he stared bleakly into the distance. 'You've disappointed me, Marco. Your journey to absolution has not begun well. But we can salvage something from this. If you got what I asked for.'

Bazin reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a La Cie portable hard drive. 'Before I was interrupted, I downloaded most of the relevant folders you told me to look for.' He handed it to Torino. 'But not all of them.'

'This better have what I want on it. I'll contact you when I need more.' Torino concealed the hard drive in his robes, turned abruptly and walked away.

Bazin thought of what he had done to acquire what Torino had asked for. 'Are you sure this is what the Church wants, Father General?' he called after Torino. 'That this is how I'll gain absolution?'

Torino stopped, and Bazin saw his shoulders tense as he turned.

'You dare to question me?' he said, his face white with rage. 'If I want advice on killing, I'll come to you. But I'll be the judge of what the Church wants and needs.' He narrowed his eyes and stepped close enough for Bazin to smell mint and garlic on his breath. 'You begged for my help. Remember?' Before Bazin could answer, Torino had grabbed his half-brother's crotch.

'What the fuck are you doing?' Bazin pulled at his wrist but Torino only gripped harder.

'Listen to me, Marco. You demanded my help. Never forget that.' He squeezed. 'You know why God let the surgeons cut off one of your balls? Because they represent your two lives: the one you live now and the one you live beyond death. God took the first because of your past sins, and if you want to keep the remaining one, the one that represents your eternal future, you must follow Him – and His Church. God's got you by the balls, Marco. You said you wanted absolution. The question is: how much?'

'I told you. I want it. I need it.'

'In medieval England, when a man gave evidence in court, he didn't put a hand on the Bible. He held his testes. The word "testimony" comes from that practice. And as I hold your last precious one, Marco, know that this is God's testimony. We're on a crusade, the Church is fighting for its very existence and God demands you help His ministry by doing whatever's necessary.' He paused to let his words sink in. 'You no longer work for the Mafia. You're no longer la mano sinistra del diavolo, a base assassin who kills for money, but a crusader, a holy warrior, God's right hand wielding a cleansing sword against Rome's mortal enemies. From this day forward, whatever I tell you to do in His name is sanctioned, pure, righteous. You understand?'

'Yes.'

Bazin did understand. Despite the pain – or because of it – relief swamped him. Finally he had found his purpose and he would surrender to it. Torino was showing him the uncompromising path that led to redemption and he would follow it to the end, come what may.

As if reading his mind, the Superior General released his grip. 'Are you prepared to do whatever I say the Church needs? However delicate? And will you pledge to help without asking questions?' 'Yes.'

'If you tell anyone of this, the Church will disavow everything. I will disavow everything. You understand?'

'I want only absolution, Father General.'

'Then you must earn it.'

Back in his quarters, Torino plugged the drive into his laptop. As he examined the contents, he felt little remorse for what had happened to Lauren Kelly and her husband. He had offered her the chance to collaborate and she had declined. Though he had not intended Bazin to harm the couple, it was vital that he learn what Lauren Kelly knew. Perversely, what had happened might even prove beneficial to the Church. With the woman silenced, it would be easier to protect the discovery outlined in the Voynich – assuming she had completed the translation. His greater concern was the Holy Father and others in the Curia. Until he had evidence, they would never condone what he was doing, especially his unholy alliance with Bazin.

On screen, the computer files documented most of the successes and failures on Lauren Kelly's tortuous path to decoding the Voynich. He read how, with Elizabeth Quinn's help, she had quickly discounted a complex polyalphabetic cipher and used her impressive breadth of linguistic knowledge to deduce that the text was a posterior synthetic language based on two existing languages. Torino had learnt this much from her talk at Yale but now he had the details.

Voynichese was apparently a hybrid of highly structured Latin and Mandarin Chinese, in which characters didn't just represent letters but whole words and phrases. The relevant letters of the Latin alphabet and the key Chinese symbols had then been transliterated into the unique characters used in the Voynich text, further disguising the blended language. Apart from this transliteration, however, the translated part of the manuscript contained no cipher. The use of Chinese tallied with Torino's research on Father Orlando Falcon. A favourite of Ignatius Loyola, Falcon had been sent on one of the first missions to China as a young Jesuit in the late 1540s.

Torino already knew from the Inquisition Archives that the author had possessed a phenomenal intellect; it was one of the reasons the Church had taken his claims so seriously, and why he had been punished so severely. Torino was equally impressed, however, by the depth of Dr Kelly's scholarship, and the counterintuitive way in which she had burrowed into the author's brilliant mind to unlock his story.

Or most of it.

Scanning the files, Torino found her verbatim translation of the Voynich story. It was even more vivid and terrifying than the synopsis had been – but it didn't include the remaining astrological section. And there was no mention of Father Orlando's radix or 'source'. In one of her earlier files Kelly had written: From what I've learnt, I believe the final astrological section may contain a series of compass bearings, geographical landmarks and star signs. My creeping suspicion is that the more I discover the more I'll be forced to revise my assumptions about the document and its mysteries…

What had she meant by that? Had she decided that the story was not an allegory but a chronicle of what its author had actually discovered? If so, had she since unravelled the final astrological section – and the map it might contain? It was tantalizingly inconclusive.

Cursing Bazin for failing to complete his task, he searched the rest of the files, but found no clear evidence that Lauren Kelly had yet deciphered the final section. Perhaps it was in the files that Bazin had been unable to download before he was interrupted. If so, Torino must claim it for the Church.

But how?

He wanted to rush out and order Bazin back to check the rest of her computer. But the Kelly house was now a crime scene and possibly under surveillance. As the Superior General of the Jesuits, he couldn't afford to be incriminated. He would have to be patient and bide his time until the right moment presented itself. He didn't feel patient, though. He felt as if a clock was ticking, counting down the seconds until his beloved Church either fulfilled its rightful destiny as God's sole ministry on Earth, or disappeared, dismissed as an obsolete relic.