The Lost Testament Read Free

“That’s it.”
    None of the interior doors in the building appeared to be locked, the staff presumably believing that the external doors offered sufficient deterrent to thieves, and as soon as both men were inside the room, they split up and began their search.
    By any standards, they were surrounded by treasures: glass cases containing ancient manuscripts and other relics, intermittently illuminated by the narrow beams of their torches. In one case lay an enormously valuable fifth-century New Testament written in Greek. In another, documents signed by Martin Luther. In yet others were a collection of love letters sent by King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, an essay written by Galileo to the Cardinal who later became Pope Urban VIII, a letter from the painter Raphaello, and another letter, this one sent by Michelangelo to the Superintendent of St. Peter’s. But they barely glanced at any of these priceless exhibits. They were looking for two very specific objects, and in a couple of minutes they had found them both.
    “Over here.”
    The two men stood side by side looking down at one particular case.
    “That’s it?” Stefan said, comparing what was written on the sheet of paper in his hand with what they were looking at inside the glass case.
    “Yes,” his companion agreed. “In fact, that’s both of them.”
    The glass on the locked display case wasn’t armored in any way and offered no more resistance to the crowbar than the pane of glass on the balcony door.
    “These other old books and stuff have got to be worth something.”
    “More than you or I could ever earn in a dozen lifetimes,” Dragan said, “but you know the way we work. We do what we’re paid to do and nothing else.” He opened up the neck of his rucksack while his companion lifted out the two objects they had been told to steal, and laid them carefully inside it.
    As they walked down the corridor between the Hall and the Borgia Apartment the younger thief grabbed the other’s sleeve and gestured toward a glass case.
    “Look at this,” he whispered. “It’s gold, a crown of gold.”
    “Yes, but—”
    Before he could finish his sentence, Stefan had already lifted his crowbar and cracked the glass that covered the ancient relic.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Look, I know what you said, and you’re right. But this is gold. We can have it melted down, so it’ll be untraceable. We’re only ever going to get an opportunity like this once.”
    Without waiting for a reply, Stefan plucked the gold crown out of the shattered display case and placed it in his rucksack. Almost as an afterthought, he also picked up a small and highly decorated copper and enamel box and took that as well.
    *   *   *
    “Put those on now, and don’t take them off until I tell you.”
    The order was unsurprising. They had encountered their employer only twice before, and each time they had been blindfolded and driven some way outside Rome to a large and clearly expensive villa, and the entire time they’d been in the building the man himself had been out of sight behind a screen, so they had no idea who he was, except that he probably wasn’t Italian, because his instructions had been relayed through an interpreter.
    This time, the journey to the villa took about forty minutes and, after removing their hoods, they were led through to the same room they had been in previously. There, an arrangement of screens had been placed at one end, and a table positioned more or less in the center of the room, the man they believed to be an interpreter standing beside it.
    “Do you have them?” the man asked.
    By way of answer, Stefan opened his rucksack, lifted out the two objects they had been told to steal and placed them on the table.
    The interpreter smiled for the first time since they had seen him.
    “Excellent,” he purred. “You have done well. Now leave the room while my employer inspects these two relics.”
    Stefan reached out his hand to pick up the