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Chapter 55
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Just for two weeks Chapter 56
Captain Andrei Romano carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and proceeded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.Jim followed the captain down the famous marble staircase into the sunken atrium beneath the glass pyramid. As they descended, they passed between two armed Judicial Police guards with machine guns. The message was clear. Nobody goes in or out tonight without the blessing of captain Romano. Descending below ground level, Jim fought a rising trepidation. Romano's presence was anything but welcoming, and the Louvre itself had an almost sepulchral aura at this hour. The staircase, like the aisle of a dark movie theater, was illuminated by
Just for two weeks Chapter 57
Murray Hill place - the new Copus peccate World Headquarters and conference center - in New York City. With a price tag of just over $56 million. The 140,000-square-foot tower is clad in red brick and Indiana limestone. The building contains over one hundred and twenty rooms, six dining rooms, libraries, living rooms, meeting rooms and offices. The second, eighth, and sixteenth floors contain chapels, ornamented will mill- work and marble. The seventeenth floor is entirely residential. Men enter the building through the main doors. Women enter through a side street and are "acoustically and visually separated" from the men at all times within the building. Earlier this evening, within the sanctuary of his penthouse apartment, Bishop koldo Myositis had packed a small travel beg and dressed in a traditional black cassock. Normally, he would have wrapped a purple cincture around his waist, but tonight he would be traveling among the public, and he preferred not to draw attention to hi
Just for two weeks Chapter 58
Having squeezed beneath the security gate, Jim Davis now stood just inside the entrance to the Grand Gallery. He was starting into the mouth of a long, deep canyon. On either side of the gallery, Stark walls rose thirty feet, evaporating in the darkness above. The reddish glow of the service lightning sifted upward, casting an unnatural smolder across a staggering collection of Da Vincis, Titans and Caravaggios that hung suspended from ceiling cables. Still lifes, religious Senses, and landscapes accompanied portraits of nobility and politicians. Although the Grand Gallery housed the Louvre's most famous Italian art, many visitors felt the Wing's most Stunning offer was actually its famous parquet floor. Laid out in a dazzling geometric design of diagonal oak slats, the floor produced an ephemeral optical illusion - a multi-dimensional network that gave visitors the sense they were floating through the gallery on a surface that changed with every step.As Jimmy's gaze began to trac
Just for two weeks Chapter 59
The modest dwelling within the church of Saint-Sulpice was located on the second floor of the church itself, to the left of the choir balcony. A two-room suite with a stone floor and minimal furnishings, it had been home to sister Rosaria Van Spee for over a decade. The nearby convent was her formal residence, but she preferred the quiet of the church and had made herself quite comfortable upstairs with a bed, phone, and hot plate. As the church's conservatrice d'affaires, Sister Rosaria was responsible for overseeing all nonreligious aspects of church operations - general maintenance, hiring support staff and guides, securing the building after hours, and ordering supplies like communion wine and wafers. Tonight, asleep in her bed, she woke up to the shrill of her telephone. Tiredly, she lifted the receiver."Soeur Rosaria. Eglise Saint-Sulpice.""Hello, sister," the man said in French. Sister Rosaria sat up. What time is it? Although she recognizes her boss's voice, in twelv
Just for two weeks Chapter 60
Jimmy couldn't tear his eyes from the glowing purple text scrawled across the parquet floor. Marquis Esquibel's finial communication seemed as unlikely a departing message as any Jim could imagine. The message read: 14-4-2-1-1-10-6-24 O, Draconian devil Oh, lame saint!Although Jimmy had not the slightest idea what it meant, he did understand Romano's instinct that the pentacle had something to do with the devil worship. O, Draconian devil!Esquibel had left a literal reference to the devil. Equally as bizarre was the series of numbers. "Part of it looks like a numeric ciph.""Yes," Romano said. "Our cryptographers are already working on it. We believe these numbers may be the key to who killed him. Maybe a telephone exchange or some kind of social identification. Do the numbers have any symbolic meaning to you?"Jimmy looked again at the digits, sensing it would take him hours to extract any symbolic meaning. If Esquibel had even intend
Just for two weeks Chapter 61
To ensure his conversation with Mr. Jim would not be interrupted, Andrie Romano had turned off his cellular phone. Unfortunately, it was an expensive model equipped with a two-way radio feature, which, contrary to his orders, was now being used by one of his agents to page him."Capitaine?" The phone crackled like a walkie.Romano felt his teeth clench in rage. He could imagine nothing important enough that Suslowicz would interrupt this surveillance cachée - especially at this critical juncture.He gave Jimmy a calm look of apology. "One moment please." He pulled the phone from his belt and pressed the radio transmission button. "Oui?" Romano's anger stalled momentarily. A cryptographer? Despite the lousy timing, this was probably good news. Romano, after finding Esquibel's cryptic text on the floor, had uploaded photographs of the entire crime scene to the cryptography department in hopes someone there could tell him what the hell Esquibel was trying to say. If a code breaker had no
Just for two weeks Chapter 62
Amorth sat behind the wheel of the black BMW the Teacher had arranged for him and gazed out at the great Church of Saint-Sulpice. Lit from beneath by banks of floodlights, the church's two bell towers rose like stalwart sentinels above the building's long body. On either flank, a shadow row of sleek buttresses jutted out like the ribs of a beautiful beast. Amorth was looking forward to finding the keystone and giving it to the Teacher so they could recover what the brotherhood had long stolen from the faithful. How powerful that will make Copus peccate.Parking the BMW on the deserted place Saint-Sulpice, Amorth exhaled, telling himself to clear his mind for the task at hand. His broad back still ached from the corporal mortification he had endured earlier today and yet the pain was inconsequential compared with the anguish of his life before Copus peccate had saved him.Still, the memories haunted his soul. Release your hatred, Amorth commanded himself. Forgive those who trespassed a
Just for two weeks Chapter 63
"Une plaisanterie numérique?" Andrie Romano was livid, glaring at Sophie McEwan in disbelief. A numeric joke? "Your professional assessment of Esquibel's code is that it is some kind of mathematical joke?"Romano was in utter incomprehension of this woman's gall. Not only had she just barged in on Romano without permission, but she was now trying to convince him that Esquibel, in his final moments of life, had been a clown. "This code," Sophie explained in rapid French, "is simplistic to the point of absurdity. Marquis Esquibel must have known we would see through it immediately." She pulled a scrap of paper from her sweater pocket and handed it to Romano. "Here is my decryption." Romano looked at the card."This is it?" He snapped. "All you did was put the numbers in increasing order!"Sophie actually had the nerve to give a satisfied smile. "Exactly."Romano's tone lowered to a guttural rumble. "Agent McEwan, I have no idea where the hell you're going with this, but I suggest you
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