22

Bronson had worked out that the straight-line distance between Santa Marinella and their destination was only about seventy miles, but he knew it would be more like double that by road.

“Seventy miles isn’t that far,” Angela said, finishing her second cup of coffee. They’d walked into the dining room at seven, the earliest time that breakfast was available.

“Agreed. On a motorway it would be an hour, but on the sort of roads we’re likely to find, I reckon it’s at least two hours’ driving. But we’ve got a bunch of things to do before we get there, so it’s going to take three or four hours altogether.”

Bronson paid the bill and carried their bags down to the Renault Espace. His first stop was a newsagent’s on the outskirts of the town, where he bought a couple of large-scale maps of the area northeast of Rome.

Five miles down the road, they found a large out-of-town commercial center and, just as Bronson had hoped, a hardware supermarket.

“Stay here,” he said, “and lock the doors, just in case. I won’t be long. What size feet do you take? The continental size, I mean?”

“Forty or forty-one,” she replied, “if you mean shoes.”

“Shoes, feet, they’re all the same.”

Twenty-five minutes later he reappeared, pushing a laden cart. Angela hopped out as he approached and opened the trunk for him.

“Good lord,” she said, eyeing the contents of the shopping cart. “It looks as if you’ve got enough there for a week-long expedition.”

“Not quite,” Bronson replied, “but I do believe in being prepared.”

Together they transferred the equipment into the back of the Espace. Bronson had bought gloves, shovels, picks, axes, crowbars, a general toolkit, haversacks, climbing boots, flashlights and spare batteries, a compass, a handheld GPS unit and even a long towrope.

“A towrope?” Angela asked. “What do you need that for?”

“You can use it for dragging rocks or tree trunks out of the way, things like that.”

“I don’t like to mention it,” Angela said, “but this Renault’s definitely not the car I’d pick for an excursion up into the hills.”

“I know. It’s completely the wrong vehicle for where we’re going, and that’s why we’re not taking it off the road. I have a plan,” he said. “We’re just going to use the Renault to get over to San Cesareo, on the southeast outskirts of Rome. I checked on the Internet last night, and there’s a four-by-four hire center there. We’ll leave the Renault somewhere in the town, and I’ve pre-booked a short-wheelbase Toyota Land Cruiser in your name. If we can’t get up to the site in that, the only other thing we could use would be a helicopter.”

It was approaching noon when Bronson parked the Renault Espace in a multistory parking garage in San Cesareo. Together they walked the few hundred yards back to the off-road vehicle hire center, and twenty minutes later they drove out in a one-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser which Angela had hired for two days, using her credit card.

“Was it safe, using my Visa?” she asked as Bronson pulled the Toyota to a halt in the parking bay next to the Renault.

“Probably not. The trouble is you can’t hire a car without using a credit card. But I’m hoping we’ll be long gone from here before anyone notices.”

They transferred all their gear, including their overnight bags, into the Toyota, then locked the Renault, and drove away.

“That’ll do nicely,” Bronson muttered, spotting a couple of used-car lots on the outskirts of San Cesareo. Both looked fairly downmarket, the lots scruffy and the cars old and somewhat battered. They looked like the kind of places where cash transactions weren’t simply welcomed, but insisted upon. And that suited Bronson very well.

He walked into the first one and haggled with the salesman for about twenty minutes, then drove out in a ten-year-old Nissan sedan. The paintwork had faded, and there were dents in most of the panels, but the engine and transmission seemed fine, and the tires were good.

“Is that it?” Angela asked, stepping out of the Toyota.

“Yes. I’ll drive this. Just follow me and we’ll sort everything else out when we get to Piglio.”

The town wasn’t far, and the roads were fairly clear, so they made good time. Bronson parked the Nissan in a supermarket parking lot which was well more than half full, and a few minutes later they drove away together in the Toyota.

On the way out of Piglio, Bronson pulled into a garage, went inside and emerged shortly afterward with a couple of carrier bags filled with sandwiches and bottles of water.

“Can you map-read, please?” Bronson asked. “We need a track or minor road that will take us as close as possible to the site, so we won’t have to walk for miles.”

The location suggested by the inscription on the skyphos was well off the main road, and thirty minutes later, after driving down increasingly narrow and bumpy roads, Angela asked him to stop the jeep so she could explain where they were.

“This is where we are now,” she said, indicating an unnumbered white road on the map, “and this dotted line here seems to be about the only route up there.”

“OK, the entrance to the track should be just around the corner.”

Bronson pulled the Toyota back onto the tarmac, drove another hundred yards until he saw a break in the bushes that lined the road. He turned in through the gap and immediately engaged four-wheel drive.

In front of him, a rough but well-used track snaked up the slope.

“Looks like other jeeps have been up here,” he said, “and perhaps a tractor or two as well. Hang on. This is going to be fairly uncomfortable.”

The main track seemed to peter out after a couple of hundred yards, but tire tracks ran in several directions, and he picked the route that seemed to head for the high ground in front of them. He urged the Toyota up the slope and over the rutted and uneven ground for nearly another mile, until they reached a small plateau studded with rocks.

Bronson angled the jeep across toward the far side, where a low cliff rose up, and then stopped the vehicle.

“That’s it,” he said. “This is the end of the road. From here we walk.”

They climbed out of the vehicle and looked around. Shrubs and trees grew in clumps all around them, and there was absolutely no sign of any human presence. No litter, no fences, no nothing. The wind blew gently in their faces, but carried no sound. It was one of the most peaceful places Bronson had ever visited.

“Quiet, isn’t it?” Angela asked.

“Probably the only people who ever venture up here are shepherds and the occasional hunter.”

Bronson turned on the GPS and marked the geographical coordinates it displayed onto the map. Then he cross-referred it to his interpretation of the diagram on the side of the skyphos.

“This is all a bit bloody vague,” he muttered, “but I think we’re in the right place.”

Angela shivered slightly. “It’s spooky. We’re standing in about the same place that Marcus Asinius Marcellus did two thousand years ago,” she said, gesturing toward the horizon. “The landscape we’re looking at is pretty much identical to what he would have seen. You can even understand why he picked those six hills. From this spot they’re the most prominent landmarks by far.”

“Our problem is that we don’t have any kind of detailed directions,” Bronson said, “so we’re going to have to check anywhere that looks a likely location. Neither these maps nor the diagram from the skyphos is going to be of much help to us now.”

“And what do you suggest would be a likely location? If Marcellus buried something in the ground, there are definitely going to be no visible signs of that now, not after all this time.”

“I don’t think we’re looking for an earth burial. Whatever was hidden was too important for that, so I think the hiding place will be in a cave or man-made stone chamber. And the entrance would nave been covered, probably by rocks or hefty slabs of stone, so that’s what we need to look out for.”

Gregori Mandino picked up the phone on the third ring. He was expecting—and hoping—it was Pierro with the news that he’d cracked the diagram on the stone, but the caller was Antonio Carlotti, his deputy.

“Some unusual news, capo,” Carlotti began. “You told me the Englishman and his ex-wife had probably left Italy by now to return to Britain?”

“Yes. Why?”

“We still have the Internet monitoring software running, and some relevant searches have just been reported from Santa Marinella.”

“Where?”

“Santa Marinella. It’s a small coastal town northwest of Rome.”

“What searches?” Mandino demanded.

“More or less the same as those we detected from Cambridge. These came from a wireless network connection in a small hotel in the town. They were detailed searches for anything to do with Nero and Marcus Asinius Marcellus.”

“That must be Bronson. What the hell is he still doing in Italy? And why is he still following this trail? When were these searches recorded? Today?”

“No—yesterday evening. And there are a couple of other oddities. Those searches were followed by one for a groma. It’s an ancient surveying tool used by the Romans. And we traced other activity on the same network. Someone downloaded the Google Earth program. That’s the—”

“I know what it is, Carlotti. Which areas did they look at?”

“We don’t know, capo. Once the computer accessed the Google Earth server, we could no longer monitor its activities. The user was effectively working inside a closed system.”

“I don’t like the sound of this. Bronson’s still in the area. He’s finding out something about Roman surveying techniques, and the fact that he then went onto Google Earth might mean he’s following some kind of trail. Anything else?”

“Yes. As soon as I heard about these searches I asked one of my contacts in the Santa Marinella area to find out who’d been staying in the hotel there. He called me back a few minutes ago. There were two English guests—a man and his wife—there last night, but the hotel staff didn’t get their names because they paid the bill in cash. All the receptionist remembered was that they spent most of the evening in their room. And they know they used the Internet because they were charged for it. They were driving a British-registered Renault Espace and checked out early this morning.”

“That confirms it, then. What did you do?”

“I tipped off one of my contacts in the Carabinieri. But it’s the last piece of information that worries me most, in view of what happened with the scroll.”

“Tell me.”

“According to one of my other contacts in the Carabinieri, this morning a Toyota Land Cruiser was hired from a garage in San Cesareo, near Rome, by a woman named Angela Lewis, who paid for two days’ hire by credit card.”

“Damn,” Mandino muttered.

“It looks like Bronson’s following the same trail as us, though I don’t understand how,” Carlotti said. “Are you sure that stone at the house hadn’t been exposed before?”

“Definitely not, but somehow he must have got hold of another copy of the diagram showing the location of the burial. And if he’s hired a jeep, he must have worked out where to start his search. Hang on a minute,” Mandino said, as another thought struck him. “The Toyota was hired in San Cesareo this morning, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Right, at least that gives us a starting point. Get the Carabinieri looking out for the Toyota.”

“Already done, capo. Anything else?”

“No. Until we find out where he’s heading, there’s nothing more we can do.”

Mandino ended the call, then dialed Rogan’s number.

“Give the phone to Pierro,” he instructed, as soon as Rogan answered.

“Pierro.”

“Mandino. Any luck with matching the diagram?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure that with time we can—”

“We don’t have time,” Mandino snapped. “I’ve just heard that Bronson has hired a jeep from a garage over to the east of Rome, and that could mean that he’s already deciphered the diagram. Where have you been looking?”

“Mainly to the north of the city, because I believe Marcellus owned estates in that area.”

“It looks to me like Bronson’s better at this than you are, Pierro, and you’re supposed to be the expert. I suggest you start looking somewhere to the east of Rome, and quickly. If he finds the tomb before we do, I will be most displeased, and you really don’t want that to happen. You know what’s at stake.”