Page 12 of The Medici Return

He parked in the public lot and stepped out into a warm summer afternoon. Physically he was unassuming. He had a friendly-looking face, a bit on the fleshy side, with pale-colored eyes. With his generous physical build, he dressed in a casual style that suggested not a lot of thought had gone into it. He looked like someone you might be happy to know, a contradiction that never hinted at his true self. He was not one to tell jokes or make comments that anyone would find unsettling. Nor was he a person with no interests, likes, or desires, someone who responded like a machine to the pulling of levers. Not at all. He was well read and enjoyed movies, especially the black-and-white classics. He thought of himself as curious of all things, especially nature. Years of therapy had taught him one sobering fact. He possessed no conscience, few moral values, and little to no emotional structure. Which all made his job so much easier.

He paid his admission fee and headed for the shuttle bus, which would take him and the other visitors over to the two horseshoe-shaped rows of rock. Thirty-five stones stood upright, some supporting huge carved lintels. The innermost circle was of smallerrocks, one even dubbed the altar stone. The whole structure was surrounded by ancient grassy earthworks. But he’d not come for the mystery or history or even the special tour. On the bus he’d noticed one of the other visitors. Coarse features, cob nose, satchel mouth, and a scrubby salt-and-pepper beard that dusted the cheeks, chin, and neck of coffee-colored skin. Another one of those unassuming individuals, the kind of person no one gave a second glance toward.

This one went by the name Bartolomé.

Thomas kept his distance as the tour group stepped off the bus and fanned out with the guide. Once visitors could roam at will. Not anymore. That privilege now came only to those who paid for the VIP experience, which involved a guide. He’d been told to be on the 11:30A.M.tour and here he was.

He stayed casual in his movements and kept his focus, like everyone else’s, on the monument. Finally, after a few minutes, he approached Bartolomé and quietly asked, “Did you know the Anglo-Saxon name for this place means ‘hanging stones’?”

Bartolomé scrutinized him with a pair of dark rheumy eyes. “That is not correct. Most antiquarians today believe it to mean ‘stone gallows.’”

The voice was deep and gravelly, and the reference to the hanging stones and gallows signaled the correct code words.

A necessary precaution.

If a different phrase had been uttered he would have known there was trouble and that this man, his personal envoy, had been compromised.

But all was good.

“There is an additional request,” Bartolomé finally whispered to him. “It came a short while ago.”

He was listening.

Bartolomé ambled toward the blue stones in the center of the horseshoe. The guide was rambling on about how they might not be native to England, perhaps coming from Wales or the continent.

He followed, staying close.

“There’s a tale,” Bartolomé said. “Legends recount that this monument was built by Merlin himself, the great blocks moved into position by magic powers without the aid of human engineering. These blue stones were supposedly brought here by magic from a quarry in the Preseli Mountains in Wales.”

He’d learned to indulge his intermediary.

Bartolomé could not be rushed.

They strolled around the stones, drifting even farther from the VIP tour and the guide. He’d actually been here before. Gray as the stones themselves seemed the lives at which they hinted. Some unknown race who liked to erect huge standing megaliths, most times in great rows or circles under an open sky. Similar monuments were found all over England. But this was the most impressive of all. Monstrous powers, born in half-lit minds, had been worshiped here, surely with great pomp and ceremony.

All pagan.

Heathen.

“You still have not mentioned the additional request,” he softly said.

“I’ve been doing some reading. In 1563, at the Ecumenical Council of Trent, headed by Pope Pius IV, it was written that nothing is more necessary to the church of God than the pope associating with himself, as cardinals, the most upright and competent shepherds. The words used then were clear.Our Lord Jesus Christ will require the blood of the evil government of shepherds who are negligent and forgetful of their office.Apparently, one has become a problem.”

That was a first.

He’d killed people, but it had always been in tough spots of the world. Retaliation for some previous violence. Message sending. He took his cue from the 1578 edition of theDirectorium Inquisitorum, the standard Inquisitorial manual.Quoniam punitio non refertur primo, per se in correctionem, bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, a malis committendis avocentur.For punishment does not take place primarily, and perse, for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.

“They offer double the usual fee for this additional service,” Bartolomé said.

“This is different.”

“I agree.”

“When would this need to be done?” he asked.

“By the end of the week.”

Proper preparation was important to success. Speed was not his strong point. Creativity took time and required coordination and flexibility.

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