lift was tucked into a stairwell. The lift’s interior was surprisingly modern, an airtight box of glass and steel that, once he’d put in his Vatican security card, sucked Santini down into the labyrinthine basements below the Apostolic Palace as smoothly and delicately as a component being pneumatically transported into a factory.
Four levels below St Peter’s Square, the lift doors opened onto a long, low room that stretched away as far as the eye could see. Dim light, so cleansed of damaging ultraviolet it seemed almost colourless, seeped from concealed diodes in the walls. The hum of the air conditioning that kept the entire level almost as cold as a morgue, and the slight vibration underfoot from the dehumidification equipment, gave Santini the sense that he was in some sleek underwater vessel, moving purposefully but calmly through the depths of the ocean.
A series of glass-walled pens along both sides of the room contained books and documents too precious, or too fragile, to be kept in the stacks. In some, bookbinders and restorers worked with powerful magnifiers to repair microscopic tears. Scholars padded to and fro – access was granted each year to a privileged few with impeccable credentials and an orthodox religious outlook, although there was currently a ban on requesting any document less than seventy-five years old. It was one of the many arcane regulations Santini was determined to stamp out.
Everyone, whether staff or visitor, wore white cotton gloves. Santini pulled a pair from the dispenser in the airlock and tugged them on while he waited for the second door to open, the air in his lungs thinning with every breath he took. Even the atmosphere down here was different, constantly purged of any gases or humidity that might damage old documents. It was, Santini thought grimly, an appropriate metaphor for the place as a whole: they didn’t even breathe the same air as the rest of humanity.
He strode into the glass meeting room, noting that despite the earliness of the hour the other attendees had clearly been there for some time; doubtless plotting how to outmanoeuvre him. As well as Verti there were two assistants, nervous-looking civil servants who avoided his gaze. And then there was the friar, Tonatelli. How old he was, it was hard to say – the baggy white robe and black mantle of the Dominican order concealed any stooping of his frame, while the blue eyes that looked at Santini from beneath frost-white eyebrows were fierce and steady. Quite how Tonatelli had come to be in charge of these archives, Santini had never been able to discover, but it was obvious from everything he’d heard that this lowly friar was the real power in this subterranean world.
“Gentlemen,” Santini said, deliberately using a secular form of address to emphasise that this was to be a practical discussion. “You said there was a problem?”
“Indeed.” Verti gestured to Tonatelli, as if they’d agreed that he would speak for them all. But the friar simply slid a flimsy sheet of paper across the table to Santini.
Santini turned sideways to read it, hitching his cassock and crossing one leg nonchalantly over the other to indicate that he had better things to be doing. It was a copy, made on an old manual typewriter with carbon paper: the letters had the tell-tale blue smudging he recalled from his childhood, and for a moment he was too distracted by that recollection to concentrate on the letter’s contents. Then a name jumped out at him. He stopped, puzzled, and went back to the date at the top.
5th October, 1944
He started again, reading more carefully this time, feeling the blood draining from his face as he did so. He glanced around for water, but of course none was provided down here, lest it get spilled on their precious bits of paper.
“Who else knows about this?” he managed to say.
It was Tonatelli who replied. The friar’s voice, unlike Santini’s, betrayed no hint of dryness. “I
Four levels below St Peter’s Square, the lift doors opened onto a long, low room that stretched away as far as the eye could see. Dim light, so cleansed of damaging ultraviolet it seemed almost colourless, seeped from concealed diodes in the walls. The hum of the air conditioning that kept the entire level almost as cold as a morgue, and the slight vibration underfoot from the dehumidification equipment, gave Santini the sense that he was in some sleek underwater vessel, moving purposefully but calmly through the depths of the ocean.
A series of glass-walled pens along both sides of the room contained books and documents too precious, or too fragile, to be kept in the stacks. In some, bookbinders and restorers worked with powerful magnifiers to repair microscopic tears. Scholars padded to and fro – access was granted each year to a privileged few with impeccable credentials and an orthodox religious outlook, although there was currently a ban on requesting any document less than seventy-five years old. It was one of the many arcane regulations Santini was determined to stamp out.
Everyone, whether staff or visitor, wore white cotton gloves. Santini pulled a pair from the dispenser in the airlock and tugged them on while he waited for the second door to open, the air in his lungs thinning with every breath he took. Even the atmosphere down here was different, constantly purged of any gases or humidity that might damage old documents. It was, Santini thought grimly, an appropriate metaphor for the place as a whole: they didn’t even breathe the same air as the rest of humanity.
He strode into the glass meeting room, noting that despite the earliness of the hour the other attendees had clearly been there for some time; doubtless plotting how to outmanoeuvre him. As well as Verti there were two assistants, nervous-looking civil servants who avoided his gaze. And then there was the friar, Tonatelli. How old he was, it was hard to say – the baggy white robe and black mantle of the Dominican order concealed any stooping of his frame, while the blue eyes that looked at Santini from beneath frost-white eyebrows were fierce and steady. Quite how Tonatelli had come to be in charge of these archives, Santini had never been able to discover, but it was obvious from everything he’d heard that this lowly friar was the real power in this subterranean world.
“Gentlemen,” Santini said, deliberately using a secular form of address to emphasise that this was to be a practical discussion. “You said there was a problem?”
“Indeed.” Verti gestured to Tonatelli, as if they’d agreed that he would speak for them all. But the friar simply slid a flimsy sheet of paper across the table to Santini.
Santini turned sideways to read it, hitching his cassock and crossing one leg nonchalantly over the other to indicate that he had better things to be doing. It was a copy, made on an old manual typewriter with carbon paper: the letters had the tell-tale blue smudging he recalled from his childhood, and for a moment he was too distracted by that recollection to concentrate on the letter’s contents. Then a name jumped out at him. He stopped, puzzled, and went back to the date at the top.
5th October, 1944
He started again, reading more carefully this time, feeling the blood draining from his face as he did so. He glanced around for water, but of course none was provided down here, lest it get spilled on their precious bits of paper.
“Who else knows about this?” he managed to say.
It was Tonatelli who replied. The friar’s voice, unlike Santini’s, betrayed no hint of dryness. “I
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