Devon It had been, by any standards, a frustrating night.

Toscanelli was certain that the call he'd made would produce results, but he was also well aware that it would take time for the necessary procedures to be put in place and for the results to be collated and analyzed. And then there would inevitably be a further delay before the man he had contacted would be able to provide him with the information they needed.

Although Toscanelli was certain it would be a waste of time and effort, they'd driven all the way up to the outskirts of Exeter, fairly quickly, then reversed direction and driven back the way they had come, but on the slower coast road, through Dawlish and Teignmouth. The chances of spotting the Porsche were slim in the extreme, and all three of the men in the car knew it, but they did it anyway.

They'd looked in the car park of every hotel they'd seen, without result. And, realistically, they all knew that they couldn't even be sure that they were looking anywhere near the right place, because if Jessop and his girlfriend hadn't stopped somewhere but had driven on into the night on the motorway system, they could by then be halfway to London or Birmingham. Great Britain was not a big country, but it was heavily populated and had an extensive road network and literally tens of millions of cars. Finding any one vehicle-even one as distinctive as that black Porsche Cayman-would be virtually impossible, at least without help. He had a gut feeling that their quarry was still somewhere nearby, but continuing their random search would achieve nothing.

They were driving around the northern outskirts of Paignton when he finally decided to call a halt to their efforts.

"That's it," he said, glancing at his watch. "This is not getting us anywhere. Head back toward Exeter on the main road, and we'll find somewhere to stop there."

"A hotel?" Dante asked hopefully, but Toscanelli shook his head.

"It's gone midnight," he said. "This is a covert operation and three Italian men checking into a hotel at this time of the morning would be bound to attract attention we don't want. No, we'll find a quiet spot somewhere and sleep in the car. And, in any case, there's something else I need to do."

As the Range Rover headed north, back toward Exeter, he opened the laptop computer he had taken from the office in the apartment in Dartmouth and waited for the desktop to appear. It didn't, but instead a password prompt was generated, which caused him to grunt in irritation.

But not only had he been well briefed before he left the building on the Aventine Hill in Rome, but he had also been provided with a number of specialist pieces of equipment in a small custom-built leather case. He shut the lid of the computer again and turned to glance at Mario, the man in the backseat.

"Open up that case," he ordered. "You'll find a couple of discs in there. Give me the one with the word Boot printed on it."

Mario did as he was instructed, passing the CD in its case to Toscanelli, who took out the disc, inserted it in the DVD drive of the laptop, and then opened the lid once again. As soon as the screen came alive, he looked at the default message displayed and then pressed the F2 key repeatedly to enter the boot options menu. When he was able to access it, he changed the boot sequence, altering the first boot device from the computer's hard disk to the DVD drive. He saved the change and exited the menu, and then watched the screen as the custom hacking software loaded a cut-down version of the operating system that would allow him to bypass the normal start-up sequence and the password request, and then access all the files and folders that were stored on the hard disk.

As the Range Rover continued north, Toscanelli scanned the directory structure, looking at the names of the folders. It didn't take long to find exactly what he was looking for: Robin Jessop had helpfully labeled one of them "Ipse Dixit," and when he checked the contents he found five files there, one entitled "Original text" and four scanned images. When he checked the dates, he discovered that both the files and the folder had been created within the last two days, which confirmed what he had been hoping. Toscanelli used a universal file viewer program to examine both the scanned images and the text file, and nodded in satisfaction when he did so. There was a lot of data in the text file, none of which he could read, but that didn't matter.

His expertise did not extend to translating Latin-which was what his masters had told him was almost certainly the language used to create the document-but obviously there would be no problem in doing so for some of the experts in the organization back in Rome. What he had to do, very obviously, was get the contents of the "Ipse Dixit" folder sent over to Italy as quickly as he could.

He looked up from the computer screen to the built-in GPS to check exactly where the car was, then expanded the map slightly to see the route ahead.

"We're just coming up to a town called Newton Abbot," he said. "Head toward the center, and then take it slow."

Then Toscanelli took out his mobile phone. Unlike all the other men in the group, he had been provided with a state-of-the-art smartphone equipped with a huge array of apps. He navigated through one of the screens until he found what he was looking for: a detection program that would identify wireless networks. He could have used the wireless facility built in to the laptop, but the phone was less obtrusive-just in case they were seen by a policeman who wondered what they were doing-and the app would probably be a bit faster to react.

"What are you doing?" Mario asked from the backseat.

"It's what the Americans call 'wardriving,'" Toscanelli replied. "I'm looking for an unsecured wireless network that I can tap in to, because I need to send the information on this laptop to Rome."

The equipment he'd been supplied with hadn't included a mobile broadband dongle, probably because his masters hadn't seen the need for one.

"Couldn't it wait until tomorrow, when we could find a cybercafe somewhere?" Dante asked.

"No. It looks to me as if this man Robin Jessop helpfully transcribed all the encrypted text from the original parchment onto this computer. If I'm right, the sooner the people in Rome get it the better, so that they can start decoding it. And if that is what he did, we probably won't have to bother recovering the relic, though that would be a bonus. We'll probably be retasked."

"To do what?" Dante asked.

"Most likely just to kill Jessop and the woman. They know too much about this to be allowed to live. And we owe them for Giacomo and the other two."

Within ten minutes the app Toscanelli was using had identified three unsecured networks. One was no good because it would be impossible to park the car anywhere within range, and he couldn't really stand in the street holding the computer while he sent the data. But the two other wireless networks-both were from closed cafes-had parking spaces conveniently located on the street outside.

Dante stopped the car outside the one that had the strongest signal and Toscanelli picked up the laptop again.

"Keep the engine running and leave the parking lights on," he instructed, "and switch on the interior light as well." He took the map book that he'd been looking at earlier and handed it to Dante. "Hold this up in front of you," he said, "in case some passing busybody or a police officer happens to spot us. You're just a lost motorist studying a map. This shouldn't take long."

He opened the wireless network connection utility, selected the network that had the most powerful signal strength, which was obviously the closest one to the car, and clicked the option to connect to it. But when he tried to do so, a dialogue box popped up asking for the password, and he muttered under his breath in irritation. Sometimes networks that were apparently unsecured asked for a password before access was granted, and obviously that was the case in this instance. Trying to crack it was something he really didn't have the time or the inclination-not to mention the skill-to attempt.

"Mario," he instructed the man in the backseat. "Get out and look in through the windows of that cafe. There might be a notice on the wall or somewhere that gives the password. If there isn't, we'll have to try the other place."

The bulky Italian opened the rear door of the Range Rover and crossed to the closed and locked door of the cafe. There was a single low-wattage light burning at the back of the cafe, positioned almost directly above the till, obviously intended as a rudimentary security feature, but the rest of the area was in semidarkness. Mario peered in through the glass door, shading his eyes so that he could see better, then stepped back and returned to the car.

"There are a couple of signs on the walls," he said. "Something in big letters, but I can't quite make out what it says. I need a flashlight."

"You'll find one in that leather case," Toscanelli said. "Just get a move on, before somebody comes along the road."

Mario walked back to the closed cafe and shone the thin but powerful beam of the flashlight into the gloom of the building. After a few seconds, he switched direction and aimed the light at the opposite wall. Then he walked back to the Range Rover and resumed his seat.

"It is a password," he announced. "They've got the same notice on both walls. In fact, we could probably have guessed it, because it really isn't all that secure. It's 'DEVON001,' all the letters in uppercase."

"Very amateurish," Toscanelli commented, quickly typed the password into the appropriate field on the screen in front of him, and then clicked CONNECT.

Within a few seconds he was able to open a Web browser, and he swiftly opened an Italian Web site, one that had deliberately never been listed on any of the major search engines, and which had a lengthy and obscure name that nobody was ever likely to type into a browser by accident. It was also protected by a military-grade log-in system. Once he had signed in, he opened a sophisticated FTP-File Transfer Protocol-utility, navigated to the documents section of the hard disk, selected the "Ipse Dixit" folder, and uploaded the entire contents to the Web site. Then he returned to the home page of the site and set an alarm specifying the folder name for the uploaded files.

Then he shut the lid on the computer and passed it over his shoulder back to Mario, took out his phone again, and dialed a number in Italy that was monitored twenty-four hours a day. When it was answered, he passed a brief message to the man in Rome, explaining to him what had happened, beginning with the unavoidable deaths of half the team members in Dartmouth, but finishing with the news-which he hoped would serve to counterbalance the disastrous beginning of the operation-that he had recovered a computer and uploaded what he believed to be the full text of the long-lost parchment to the Web site. Then he ended the call.

The man he had called was, Toscanelli knew, merely a low-level operative, and it would not be until the following morning-or rather a few hours later that same morning, he realized, glancing at his watch-that anyone in authority in the order would be able to check the contents of the folder. And that same person would be able to issue whatever new or revised orders seemed appropriate in the light of what had happened so far.

As Toscanelli replaced the phone in his pocket, Dante glanced at him.

"So now what do we do?" he asked.

"We find somewhere to spend the rest of the night. No hotel, no guesthouse. We're going to sleep in the car because we really don't have any other options. Turn round and head back along the main road, and then drive north toward Exeter. Then we'll find somewhere quiet out in the country somewhere."

Dante nodded, switched on the headlamps, made a U-turn, and drove away from the cafe, then swung north back toward Exeter, through the area that they had been searching earlier that evening. They kept their eyes open just in case the Porsche suddenly appeared, though that would have been an extraordinarily unlikely occurrence.

About ten minutes after leaving Newton Abbot, Dante picked a side road that looked quiet and little used, and pulled the car off the road into a small copse that offered some kind of cover from prying eyes. The three men made sure that their weapons were well out of sight, just in case anybody-most especially a policeman-spotted the vehicle and looked through the windows, checked that all the doors were locked, opened a couple of windows a bare inch or two to let in some fresh air, and then settled down to try to get some sleep during what remained of the night.

25.

Devon They woke up with daylight, because they hadn't realized the car was parked facing toward the east and as soon as dawn broke the vehicle was filled with the brilliance of the morning sun, a light simply too bright to sleep through. The leather seats of the Range Rover were comfortable enough to sit in, but had never been designed as beds, and although Dante and Toscanelli had reclined the backs as far as they would go, while Mario stretched out across the backseat as best he could, they all awoke with stiff and aching limbs and very short tempers.

They barely even discussed what they should do that morning, because all three of them first needed something to eat and some hot and strong coffee to drink. Dante started the engine, powered the Range Rover out of the copse, its four-wheel-drive system making short work of the muddy track, rejoined the main road, and headed north into the center of Exeter itself to find a cafe.

That didn't prove difficult, though getting coffee as strong as the three men liked it was more of a trial, the English drink tasting weak and insubstantial compared to what they were used to. But it was hot and it was wet, and that was better than nothing. They ordered a second pot while they demolished the basket of bread rolls and croissants that had come with the first cafetiere, and then Toscanelli produced the road atlas that he had brought from the car and opened it on the table in front of his companions.

"So I suppose now we start searching again?" Dante asked.

"No," Toscanelli replied quietly, both men speaking Italian, "we don't. We wait for the call I'm expecting."

He used the end of his knife to point at Exeter on the map, then indicated the motorway network that extended around the city. "We're here because we have no idea where Jessop and the woman went. This is a good location because there are fast roads leading in all directions out of the city, so as soon as we have a sighting we can get to the spot as quickly as possible."

"Sighting?" Dante asked.

"The man I called last night is a senior British police officer, as well as being a lay member of the brotherhood. The police here have a clever camera system called ANPR that reads the registration plates of motor vehicles, as well as more surveillance cameras than any other country in the world. I have asked him to initiate a search for the Porsche. With the registration number, it can be tracked almost everywhere it goes, because it is almost impossible for any car to drive through a British city without passing at least one camera."

"So, why hasn't he called already?"

"Because it takes time to collate the information, and although I stressed the urgency of our quest-without telling him what we are doing here, obviously-he can only feed the tracking request into the system as a low-priority task. Otherwise questions would be asked. But I am sure that he will be in contact this morning, at the latest. Then we can track these people down and eliminate them."

"It's a shame we don't still have the other vehicle and the other team," Mario said. "Six pairs of eyes would be better than three."

"I had no choice," Toscanelli replied, in response to the man's implied criticism. "I had no idea what had happened to the others until I stepped into that apartment. In fact, I still don't know what happened, but Giacomo and Gaetano were both unconscious and immobilized with cable ties around their wrists and ankles. Giacomo was also bleeding badly from a number of puncture wounds on both his hands, and I have not the slightest idea how those injuries were sustained. But I could hear the police car approaching, and I knew that I didn't have time to try to revive either of them, though I did try to bring Gaetano round. I certainly didn't have time to cut them free and get them both down the staircase before the British police arrived."

He shrugged and shook his head, almost sadly. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, more confidential, and although they were speaking Italian in an English country town, he was still careful to ensure that none of the other patrons in the cafe could overhear what he was saying.

"You both know the orders that we were given, and how important it is that no word of what we are doing leaks out. Because I couldn't get the men off the premises, I only had one option to make sure that they would be unable to talk. To anyone. The only consolation, I suppose, is that they were both unconscious already, and so they would have felt nothing when the bullets hit them."

"And what about Valerio?" Dante asked.

"I had the same problem. He was unconscious and it looked as if his shoulder had been dislocated. Just like the other two, somebody had immobilized him with more plastic cable ties. By that time, the police car had actually braked to a stop, and I was expecting the officers in it to approach the apartment within a matter of seconds. Once again, I didn't have enough time to get Valerio down the outside staircase, and so I had no other option. I had to shoot him as well."

Dante shook his head and stared across the table at Toscanelli.

"What?"

"I know the importance of what we're doing," Dante said, "and that the operation must be kept completely secret, but I still think you could have got them out. If you'd taken the suppressor off the pistol and fired a couple of shots in the air, that would have stopped the police coming any closer. Then you'd have had time to revive Giacomo and the other two and get them down the stairs and out of the building. I think you acted too quickly, and without thinking it through."

For a few seconds, Toscanelli didn't respond, just held Dante's gaze until the other man looked away.

"That's why I'm in charge of this operation and you're not," he said eventually, his voice thick with controlled fury. "I did act quickly, but I did think it through first. If I had fired a couple of shots, as you suggested, then I quite agree that the police would have stayed well back. Unfortunately they would also have surrounded the building within minutes. Don't forget that there's a British Royal Navy training establishment just up the road, where weapons are certain to be held, as well as people trained to use them. So we would have had to contend with not only armed police, but also members of the British Royal Navy as well. By the time I could have revived those three, we would have had to try to fight our way out of a cordon of well-armed men around the building, and you know as well as I do what the result of that would have been."

He switched his glance from Dante to Mario and back again.

"So if, Dante, I'd followed the strategy you've just suggested, the most likely outcome is that as well as our three companions being either dead or in police custody, I would have been shot down in the street. Then neither you nor Mario would have the slightest idea where to find Jessop and his secretary or his girlfriend or whatever she is, and you'd have had no option but to return to Rome, and you know what would be likely to happen to you there. Failure is not an option within the order, or in our quest for veritas."

Both men facing him were silent as they contemplated the implied threat in what he had said.

"The only good thing," Toscanelli went on after a few moments, "is that we can at least be sure that this mission has not been compromised in any way. Nobody in this country, apart from the three of us, has any idea why we're here or what we're trying to achieve. I regret those three deaths, obviously, but if I had left any of those men alive, by now I'm quite sure that the British police would already be looking for us, because one of those men would certainly have let something slip under interrogation.

"We also have a minor problem to take care of. The British police now have three dead bodies in Dartmouth, but what they also have is the other Range Rover. I didn't have time to search any of the men for the key of the vehicle, so it was probably in one of Valerio's pockets."

Dante shook his head.

"I don't see that that's a problem," he said. "We made absolutely sure that both vehicles were clean before we left the airport, and the only things in them are our pistol cases, and they don't matter."

Toscanelli stared at him for a moment.

"You're not thinking," he said, a sharp edge to his voice. "Both those vehicles were hired from the same place at the same time using the same credit card, which is in my pocket right now. Even an averagely stupid British police officer is going to eventually make the connection and realize that the people who were driving the second Range Rover could possibly be involved with the three dead bodies they are already investigating. As you know, that vehicle is in one of the parking spots in a side street down the road right now, and that's exactly where it's going to stay."

He glanced around the cafe again, then continued. "Sooner or later, some patrolling police officer will spot the car, but because we're not far away from the Exeter Central Railway Station, leaving it here will confuse the issue to some extent because they won't know for certain if we climbed onto a train and left the area, or if we did something else. On the way here I checked on the Internet"-he took out his smartphone and put it on the table in front of him for emphasis-"and there's a car hire business located a short distance down this road. So when we drive away from here, we'll be in a different vehicle, one that I'll be hiring with a different credit card in a different name, and that should give us a bit of breathing space."

Before either of the other men could comment or disagree with him, Toscanelli's phone rang, a shrill and strident sound that he silenced almost immediately, lifting the mobile to his ear.

The conversation that followed was almost entirely one-sided, Toscanelli listening to what appeared to be a series of instructions from the caller, and responding only when necessary, usually replying with a monosyllable-s or no-occasionally elaborated with another word or two.

When he finished the call, Toscanelli glanced at his two companions.

"That was Rome," he said softly. "The orders stay the same, but the emphasis has changed. The recovery of the relic is now of secondary importance because I was right about the contents of that document on the computer. Our experts are already working on decrypting and translating it. If possible, we still need to find it, and either recover it or make sure it's completely destroyed."

"So what's our first priority now?" Mario asked.

"Simple. We are to find Robin Jessop and the girl and kill them. If possible, we are to make it look like an accident, but however we do it, they are to die before we return to Italy. That is now our top priority."

Five minutes later, the phone rang again, and this time the conversation was longer, and conducted in English, Toscanelli making brief notes in a small book as he talked with the caller. When he finished, he glanced at the other two men.

"We've had a bit of luck," he said. "That was our lay brother in the police force. The analysis of the camera footage shows that the Porsche drove into Exeter last evening, but none of the cameras detected it leaving the city. That means they're still here, and I have a note of the route the car followed. I still don't know exactly where they are, but at least we now know where to start looking."

Just under thirty minutes later, the three men piled into a hired Ford sedan, Toscanelli giving directions to Dante based upon what the traffic cameras had recorded. His plan was simple: they would drive to the location of the last camera that the Porsche had driven past and start their search from that point.

And when they found the two people, they'd kill them, and Toscanelli was already thinking of inventive and painful ways they could do that. He wasn't going to bother even attempting to make it look accidental. After what had happened, Jessop and the woman were going to suffer. He would make sure of that.

26.

Exeter, Devon "All that did happen, didn't it?" Robin asked, pouring out coffee into two cups from the pot that had been delivered to her bedroom a couple of minutes earlier. "I mean it wasn't all some complicated and utterly realistic nightmare that I'm just waking up from?"

Mallory had decided room service might be a safer option than going down to the hotel dining room for breakfast. Keeping as far out of sight as possible just seemed to be prudent, in the circumstances. And he had another idea he wanted to suggest as well.

"Unfortunately that was all very real, and we have a lot of questions that still need answering, so we need to get started sooner rather than later," Mallory said.

"Well, I definitely need to go shopping, and I have to call Betty. She'll be worried, obviously."

"I still think you should keep your mobile switched off and the battery out of it," Mallory said. "Otherwise the police will certainly be able to find out more or less where you are, and we definitely need to stay off the radar for a while until we find out what's going on with this parchment and these Italian thugs. Don't forget that we were involved in a gun battle in the streets of Dartmouth last night, and the cops take a very dim view of anything involving firearms, so I'm absolutely certain finding you will be a very high priority."

"But supposing I just made one call? I really need to tell her that I'm okay and tell her to keep the shop open and everything running. Apart from anything else, there are a couple of orders that need to be sent out quite urgently."