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leader of the White Knights shook his head.
    “We are not undertaking a journey in the way that you mean,” he replied. “In fact, we have probably traveled as far as we need to. If you can find space for us here in your country, we would very much like to stay.”
    The confederate officer nodded briskly. “After what happened today, I am sure that that would not be a problem for anybody. I am also sure that there is much that you can teach us.”
    “There is, and not just about battlefield tactics. We have hard-won experience culled from two centuries of campaigns, assets that span the continent and even farther afield, and esoteric knowledge that has guided us in our endeavors. And we will be happy to share everything with you in exchange for a safe haven in which to live. That, my friend, is all we ask.”
    “Then you are indeed welcome, my lord. You and your companion White Knights.”

1
    Present day
    Via di Sant’Alessio, Aventine Hill, Rome, Italy
    Privacy costs money, and was a benefit that few could afford in Rome. The Via di Sant’Alessio was one of the most exclusive areas of the city, and in that quiet road privacy was both expensively purchased and expected. Very few of the properties located there displayed the slightest outward indication of what activity or activities were carried out inside them. One of these, a substantial detached building encircled by well-tended gardens behind high walls, offered nothing more than a house number to anyone who looked at it.
    Inside this building it was always busy, because it contained some of the more private administrative facilities of a much more public organization that was located in abuilding facing the Lungotevere Aventino, not too far from the minor basilica of Santa Sabina.
    One of the departments working within the building was a specialist intelligence and operational unit, a group of people who had virtually no contact with any of the other staff in the building because they had no need to do so. Their place of work was a small suite of air-conditioned rooms in the lowest level of the basement, accessed only through a steel-lined door that was permanently locked and only ever opened to allow the unit’s staff to come and go. None of the other people working in the building, not even the most senior administrators, had any right of access to the basement at any time or for any reason. It formed the most private and deniable part of the Ordo Praedicatorum, was answerable to nobody, and had essentially unlimited funding. Provided, of course, that the long-term goals of the organization—goals that might appear senseless to an outsider—were met.
    In his private office within that suite, Silvio Vitale leaned back in his chair and stared with barely disguised hostility at the man standing in front of him. It was an obvious measure of the tone of the interview so far that his subordinate, Marco Toscanelli, was still standing rather than sitting in one of the comfortable leather chairs in front of the desk.
    “How sure are you that they’re both dead?” Vitale demanded.
    He was a slim man who had a pencil-thin mustache and a deceptively friendly appearance. Deceptive because, as Toscanelli knew only too well, he could erupt withoutwarning into violent rages that were characterized by calculated brutality and extreme violence directed against anyone who had offended him. As always, Vitale was wearing a black suit, the unofficial uniform of the organization of which he was the head.
    Toscanelli shook his head. “I can’t be certain of that, no. After we opened the chests in the cave, they both ducked down into the tunnel system that ran under the cave. We didn’t even know that the tunnel existed, because the entrance that had been exposed once they’d shifted the rocks and timbers just looked like a hole in the ground. We tossed a grenade after them, but I don’t know if they were caught in the blast or not. I had other things to deal with at the