The Lost Testament Read Free Page A

rucksack, but the interpreter shook his head.
    “You can leave that here. My employer will not take long.”
    The two men glanced at each other, then shrugged and left the room as they’d been told. They had no option but to comply: the presence of two tall and heavily built men standing by the door ensured that. They were ushered into a small anteroom by one of these two guards, who then took up a position in the open doorway.
    But the interpreter had been right. Less than ten minutes after they’d been told to leave, the two men were called back inside the room. The scene appeared to be exactly as it had been when they’d left, albeit with three small changes: in addition to the two literary manuscripts they’d been told to steal, the golden crown and the enamel box were also placed on the table—their rucksacks had clearly been searched—as well as a single piece of brown parchment.
    The interpreter stared at the two men in a disapproving fashion.
    “The instructions we gave you, the most specific instructions issued by my employer, were extremely simple. He wished you to steal these two manuscripts”—he pointed at the two leather-bound objects on the table—“the work of the Italian poets Petrarch and Torquato Tasso, and nothing else. Yet you apparently saw fit to take this crown and box of mementos too. Why was that?”
    For a moment, neither man replied. Then Dragan took a half step forward and pointed at the crown.
    “It was my decision,” he said. “It was obvious that the theft would be discovered almost immediately, and I thought it might help to muddy the waters slightly if we picked up another couple of items from the library while we were there, to disguise the real objective of the robbery.”
    That was nothing like what had actually happened, but as a spur-of-the-moment improvization, he thought it was quite inventive, and almost believable.
    The interpreter stared across the table, his eyes moving from one man to the other; then he nodded, turned and disappeared behind the screens at the far end of the room. The sound of muffled voices could be heard. After about half a minute, he returned.
    “We applaud your quick thinking, though my employer does not believe you for a moment. You took the other two objects, intending to keep them for yourselves. However, that is not important because you did recover what you were paid to find. Now we have one other question for you.” The interpreter pointed at the single sheet of parchment lying by itself on the table. “What is that?” he asked.
    The two men stared at the object.
    “I’ve no idea,” Dragan replied. “I’ve never seen it before. We picked up the two sets of manuscripts from the display case and took nothing else from that room.”
    “That was at the back of the Tasso collection, but it is obviously not a part of it.”
    Dragan shrugged. “Sorry. I’ve no idea.”
    “Very well. You have already received half of the agreed fee, and later today we will pay you the remainder, once you have completed one further task for us.”
    “That was not a part of our arrangement,” Dragan replied. “We were to carry out the theft, deliver the goods to you and then we were to be paid.”
    “But you’ve already broken your part of the agreement by stealing these two other items. My employer is a fair man, and he has agreed you may retain the enamel box and the additional sheet of parchment and try to sell them if you wish. Call it a bonus. And the additional task we want you to perform is very, very simple, but we will be watching you to make sure that you complete it exactly as we order. You are to take the crown and the two manuscripts, place them in a secure metal container we will provide and then throw them away at the precise time and place that we tell you.”
    “What? I don’t understand.”
    “You don’t need to. You just need to do what we ask.”
    *   *   *
    Five days later, the man who had organized and paid for the