The Malta Exchange (Cotton Malone 14)

But he wondered about that observation. Spagna had not survived for as long as he had by taking huge risks.

He resented Spagna’s invasion into his life. Sometimes, in the morning, while shaving, he caught the mirrored reflection of a man he might not ever have recognized but for the fact he’d created him. Crafted as carefully as a sculptor working a slab of stone. As with everyone, though, scars existed, the stigmata of a troubled past, and even he’d thought himself finished, his mistakes leading toward a lonely failure. But now it seemed he might have a second chance.

“Might I ask a question?” Chatterjee said.

Why not? “Go ahead.”

“What name do you plan to take as pope?”

An odd question, but one he had definitely considered.

He actually admired the full title. His Holiness, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, Servant of the servants of God.

But that was a bit much, even to him.

The early bishops of Rome had all used their baptismal names after election. Then, in the mid-6th century, Mercurius wisely decided that a pope should not bear the name of a pagan Roman god. Mercury. So he adopted the label John II in honor of his predecessor who had been venerated as a martyr. Later on, when clerics from the north, beyond the Alps, rose to the papacy, they replaced their foreign names with more traditional ones. The last pope to use his baptismal name was Marcellus II in 1555.

Which he would emulate.

“I’ll be Kastor I.”

Chatterjee chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Spagna knows you all too well. The password for the flash drive is KASTOR I.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Cotton stared at the man who called himself Pollux Gallo. “The guy who just tried to kill me used that name, too.”

“I know, and I apologize,” Gallo said. “But I have a serious situation simmering within the ranks of the Hospitallers. The man you were dealing with was an imposter.”

Obviously. “Who was he?”

“A knight, as were the others with him. Every organization has its share of fanatics. We are no exception.”

That subject required more delving, but first he wanted to hear more from Stephanie.

“Cotton, I had no idea you were involved with any of this until a few hours ago,” she said. “I’ve been working this situation for over a week, but I just learned about the Brits.”

“What situation?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Things have been fluid, to say the least. I understand you’ve been dealing with James Grant, and Grant has been dealing with the Entity.”

Back when he was active with the Magellan Billet he’d worked several times with Danjel Spagna’s people. Most of the Western world’s spy agencies did the same. The Vatican was an intelligence gold mine. Every day ecclesiastical, political, and economic information poured in from thousands of priests, bishops, laypeople, and nuncios. An amazing array of eyes and ears in nearly every country in the world. No one else possessed that kind of surveillance network.

“Of course,” Stephanie said, “working with the Entity is not a one-way street. Information has to be traded. I’ve learned that a week ago, James Grant shared the fact that the Churchill letters had surfaced. He’d tracked the potential seller, then inquired if the Vatican had any information on that seller. Anything that might corroborate the letters’ authenticity. Smartly, he didn’t want to waste time dealing with a fraud. He spoke with Spagna personally.”

He asked, “What did Grant learn?”

“Supposedly, Spagna was no help. Yet the Lord’s Own is now on Malta, wreaking havoc, and Grant is here in Italy searching for those letters. Hopefully Luke has things under control there, though he’s had some issues today.”

He smiled at her performance assessment. “He’ll get the job done.”

“I’m sure he will. But like you, he’s working blind.”

Gallo said, “This is a difficult situation for me, Mr. Malone. My twin brother, Cardinal Gallo, is deeply involved with all of this. I’m afraid he’s drawn himself into another difficult situation.”

“I read about him and what’s happening within your organization. You said twin. Identical?”

Gallo nodded.

Unfortunately, in the articles he’d read there’d been no photograph of Cardinal Gallo. Which would have been helpful in ferreting out the imposter he’d just encountered.

“Who just tried to kill me?” he asked.

“A group within our ranks known as the Secreti.”

He noticed no ring on the man’s fingers, and no evidence that he may have worn one in the past. “The imposter told me about them and said they no longer existed.”

“And until a few hours ago I would have agreed with him. But that’s not the case. They do exist, in some new form. It’s my belief they’re the ones who attacked you in the villa and killed three men, including one of their own.”

“To keep me from taking him?”

Gallo said, “That seems logical. You have to understand, thanks to my brother, the Knights of Malta are currently in a state of fracture, polarized to the extreme. It’s a civil war. One side is loyal to the order, the other is in open rebellion. You met some of the rebels tonight.”

“Where were you when those rebels were trying to kill me?”

“In Rome. I only learned of the situation, and that you were at the Villa Malta, after you were airborne. I’ve been in contact with Ms. Nelle for the past few days, working with her. When I mentioned the situation and your name, we came north as fast as possible.”

He had no reason to doubt this man, particularly with Stephanie involved.

“The Secreti want the Churchill letters,” Gallo said, “so they can make a deal with the British. Supposedly, the British have information that the Secreti want.”

“Like what?” he asked.

Gallo hesitated, but a nod from Stephanie seemed to answer his reluctance to speak.

“Tell him,” she said.

“The Knights Hospitallers are unique among the warrior-monks,” Gallo said. “The Templars are gone. The Teutonics barely exist. But the Hospitallers remain strong. We are a viable, worldwide charitable organization. Some of that survival is thanks to our adaptability, perpetually making ourselves useful. Some of it is due to perseverance, some to luck. But some is attributable to what we once knew. It involves something called the Nostra Trinità. Our Trinity.”

“Sounds ancestral,” Cotton noted.

“It is. In fact, it goes to our core. At first it was the Nostra Due. The Holy Duo. Two documents the knights had always held dear from our earliest existence. The Pie Postulatio Voluntatis, the Most Pious Request, from 1113, that recognized our existence and confirmed our independence and sovereignty. The second is the Ad Providam, from 1312, where Pope Clement V handed over all of the Templars’ property to us in perpetuity. The Templars had been dissolved five years earlier and the Ad Providam gave us nearly everything they owned. There are signed originals of both of those documents in the Vatican, so there is little doubt of their existence. But we always kept our own originals.”

“Why?” Stephanie asked.

“They are the sole evidence of our legitimacy, our independence. Both those principles have been called into question many times in the past, and it was always those two papal decrees that ended any debate.”

“And the third part, which made it a trinity?” Cotton asked.

“It came to us later, in the Middle Ages, and is much more mysterio

us. No one alive today, to my knowledge, has ever seen it. It’s called the Constitutum Constantini. Constantine’s Gift. It’s what Napoleon and Mussolini sought, and it’s also what my brother is after. All three documents were kept together and guarded for centuries by the Secreti, whose members pledged an oath to protect them. And they did, until 1798, when all three documents disappeared and have not been seen since. To bind them together in solidarity, the Secreti wore a ring with a palindrome that dates back to Constantine the Great.”

He explained to Stephanie about the ring and the five lines that could be read the same in every direction.

“The Latin has been interpreted many different ways,” Gallo said. “One variation is something like ‘the sower, with his eye on the plow, holds its wheels with care.’ Which is nonsense, as are all of the other interpretations.”

Including Grant’s from earlier.

“The real message is hidden.” Gallo reached inside his jacket pocket and removed a pen and small notebook. He drew a cross of squares and inserted letters, adding four other boxes outside the cross.

“Taken together, the letters of the five words are an anagram. The key is the N at the middle. All of the letters in the palindrome are paired except the central N, which stands alone. By repositioning the letters around the central N, a cross can be made that reads Pater Noster, in both directions. Latin for ‘Our Father,’ and the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer. The remaining four letters, which are two A’s and two O’s, are a reference to Alpha and Omega. The beginning and end. Symbols of eternity, from the Book of Revelation. For Christians in the 4th century that meant the omnipresence of God.”

“Who would have thought?” Cotton said. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

“It’s not. Early Christians shared the five-worded palindrome as a way to identify themselves with one another. Constantine himself sanctioned its use. The Secreti eventually adopted it as their symbol.”

“What does any of this have to do with the coming conclave?” Stephanie asked.

Cotton was wondering the same thing.

“Perhaps everything,” Gallo said. “There’s a relevance today to Constantine’s Gift that my brother has somehow garnered. With Archbishop Spagna’s help, I’m sure. As I’ve already told Ms. Nelle, Kastor wants to be pope.”