AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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.
He pointed at the ring. “There’s etching inside.”
Grant looked. “The eight-pointed Maltese cross.”
“Can we get some bacon?” He was more hungry than he thought.
“Anything you like,” Grant said.
He needed time to think, so more food might do the trick. “Bacon and eggs would be terrific. The eggs over hard. I hate runny.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Though, being an Englishman, that’s probably an odd preference.”
Grant motioned for the waiter and placed the order, then turned back and stared at him across the table. “Have we both hedged enough?”
He agreed, time to drop the act. “You paid me an obscene fee, then sent me in there blind just to see what would happen.”
“And if that were true?”
“If I were still a Justice Department agent, I’d probably beat the living crap out of you.”
“And in your retirement?”
“It’s still up in the air.”
He allowed his words to settle in, staring out through the wall of glass to the hotel’s cloisterlike courtyard. Then he faced the Brit. “I’m going to eat my free breakfast, take my fifty thousand euros, and head home. As we like to say where I come from, I don’t have a dog in this fight.”
“What do you know of the Knights Hospitallers? Or, as they are called today, the Knights of Malta?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“Thankfully, I do.”
* * *
Sometime around 1070 a small group of merchants from Amalfi founded the Hospice of St. John the Almoner near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. They were Good Samaritans, stretcher bearers for pilgrims who’d survived the arduous journey to the Holy Land. Eventually they constructed hospitals across all of the land conquered by the Crusaders. In 1113 Pope Paschall II bestowed upon them papal legitimacy, their trademark habit a black surcoat with a cowl, an eight-pointed cross in white linen affixed to the left breast. By 1150 they had grown into soldier-monks, knights errant of the cross, becoming the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.
Their first duty always remained caring for the sick, but their second was tuition fifei. Defense of the faith. Interested parents would place their son’s name forward at birth and pay a large fee. Acceptance came at age eighteen. To be eligible then the young man had to be strong, well built, and fit enough to endure the life of a soldier.
And the pedigree had to be perfect.
