The venetian code, p.5
The Venetian Code, page 5
Then there was Sergei Rabinovitch, a man who was entitled to lead after his father had served with the KGB, which was now the SVR. He was intelligent, impatient, and a man who exceeded expectations from his Russian principals, the man a star in the making.
Whereas Vladimir Pushkin was the brawn and Sergei Rabinovitch the brains, it was apparent that Ivan Novikov was the financier while the rest were merely military puppets who moved under the manipulation of Rabinovitch’s commands. Whether or not Ivan Novikov had any influence over the team was unclear at this time.
In another file, Kimball brought up recent photos of the team entering Venice. Each member was carrying a military-issued duffle bag, no doubt containing equipment such as suppressors, small automatic firearms, NVG hardware, shin and forearm composite shields, the normal gear of a soldier. This told Kimball that they had bypassed all the checkpoints untouched, meaning that Novikov’s financial payoffs to the customs agents bought a few moments of their time, at least long enough for them to turn a blind eye against their entry. Apparently, Novikov’s influence ran as far as Venice with prepaid payoffs to agents who manned certain gates that would oversee that their entry would be smooth and uncontested.
Nine men, Kimball thought, eight of them seasoned killers trained by Russia’s elite special forces. And, as usual, the Vatican Knights, with five members, were once again outmanned and outgunned.
With a few more keystrokes, Kimball brought up additional data.
Once Novikov’s team arrived in Venice, the Vatican Intelligence was unable to shadow the team after they disappeared like magic, Kimball was directed to hold back on the rules of engagement since Novikov’s team had not yet proven to be a hostile element.
“They will be,” Kimball murmured.
Typing, Kimball sent a message to Vatican Intelligence.
KH: Do you have a lead as to where they might be? Or Something that might give us some detail as to what they may know.
VI: Negative. We’re working on it. Right now, Novikov is a step ahead of us. He and his unit are ghosts in the dark. Though he has the manuscript, it’s unknown if he has a lead to the treasure’s whereabouts or is lost within the translations.
KH: Understood.
VI: Be careful. Novikov’s team, as you have probably read by now, is a unit with high-end military sophistication who were brought along for a reason.
KH: Find them!
VI: Per the command of His Holiness, you are to stand down unless force is necessary.
KH: Understood. But I want eyes on the opposition. Moving about blindly knowing that an active threat shares the same grid as we do is cause for concern. Unless we know where they are, we might be the ones caught within the crosshairs of Novikov’s fire.
VI: Understood.
KH: Out.
Leaving the laptop on knowing that the screen would soon wink off into sleep mode, Kimball got to his feet and went to the balcony. The air was cool, breezy, the night near perfect with a canopy of pinprick lights sparkling overhead like a cache of diamonds spread over black velvet.
Closing his eyes, he left his mind blank and peaceful. But when he opened his eyes the real world returned, and he deliberated about the brewing madness that was overtaking anything that had once been considered reasonably sane. In Europe, the threat of nuclear war was rearing its ugly head. Elsewhere, there were culture wars, governments in jeopardy, hatred, bigotry, pandemics and diseases, the pains of global warming—the world appeared to be coming apart not by the inches, but by yards and miles. And the Vatican Knights, he considered, were merely a cosmic part of this darkening landscape trying their best to right a listing ship. Although they could quell skirmishes and save a few innocent lives, did it really matter in the scheme of the overall picture? Sighing, he looked skyward and wished that he could make a bigger impact.
Are You listening? he thought. Do You see what’s going on?
There was nothing but the soft sound of the soughing wind.
Though he did not receive a response in the form of a powerfully omniscient voice, Kimball would get his answer.
Soon, when his world appeared to be on the verge of collapse, he would make the ultimate difference.
CHAPTER NINE
The Vatican Knights’ Safe House
Venice, Italy
Following Morning
Monsignors Russo and Calidonna felt jubilation with the discovery of what they believed to be the diary’s starting point in regard to the Templar treasure. They had discovered prose that they believed was an important passage in regard to finding the treasure’s location, after interpreting keywords of Latin phrases with one phrase standing out, in particular: Iter Recro Incipit Ab Hoc Primo Gradu. (The journey to revival begins with this first step). The symbols (the ١, ⇭, and DCCCXXIX), though they were being analyzed, had yet to provide them with the phrase’s origin point, though gains were swiftly being pieced together by the team. Within the hour, after deciphering and comparing the images from aged texts, they were able to conclude with confidence that the Templar’s enigmatic writing described three likelihoods: one, the first character was the Islamic numeral I, representing the origin point. Two, the image in the middle represented a church, the figure proven to be so when compared to writings of other aged texts. And three, the Roman numerals DCCCXXIX, which represented the number 829. Being historians, the number was as clear to them as an epiphany. It was the year that the St. Mark’s Basilica began its construction. And the Islamic numeral ١ before the image of the church? It was part of the Islamic influence for the number ONE that also marked the inaugural point to begin the expedition.
“You’re positive about this?” Kimball asked them.
“Of course, we understood the meaning of the second symbol as representative of a church. The question then became, which church? Venice has many. But the Roman numerals acted much like coordinates without the minutes and seconds we use today. The third image, the Roman numeral representing the number 829, is the year that St. Mark’s Basilica began its construction. In the first image, we weren’t sure what it was. Could it have been a wall? A partition? A gate of some kind? But then we analyzed the Latin phrase: Iter Recro Incipit Ab Hoc Primo Gradu. Or, the journey to revival begins with this . . . first . . . step. This first step! The first image isn’t a wall, gate, or any kind of obstruction at all as we first believed. That’s when we realized that it was a part of the basilica’s Islamic influence and the Islamic numeral for one. It represents the first step.”
“The treasure’s there? At St. Mark’s Basilica?”
“It says the first step,” said Monsignor Calidonna. “So, I’m assuming that this is the first of many steps.”
“Many steps? How many?”
“We don’t know. But the monsignor and I are trying to determine if the treasure is hidden somewhere inside the church, or if the basilica is a gateway to another location. Perhaps it’s all three. But finding the starting point is paramount since it opens a doorway into our findings. Hopefully, other enigmatic doorways will open quicker now that we’ve broken through the surface.”
“Then let’s see what lies underneath, shall we?”
The monsignors gave Kimball a puzzled look.
Then from Monsignor Russo who spoke with a thick Italian accent, he asked, “What lies underneath?”
“Let’s do a little recon,” Kimball answered. And then: “We’re going to St. Mark’s Basilica. I want you to look at every symbol, every statue, the shapes within the stained-glass windows, anything that might offer a clue as to the whereabouts of the Cup. If there’s a symbol anywhere inside that church that mirrors a symbol inside the manuscript you’re interpreting, then I’m going to assume it’s a lead.”
“Most likely,” said Monsignor Calidonna. “But then to determine the details behind the details may take time, a riddle within a riddle. The Templars knew the symbols as they were a much earlier form of Morse Code. A riddle to us was not a riddle to them. It was simply an ancient way of encryption that kept non-Templars from seeking the whereabouts of the treasure, including the Vatican since it was Pope Clement who was pressured to arrest the Knights at the urging of King Philip IV of France.”
“Then we move immediately,” said Kimball, “since we’re not alone in this. It appears that Ivan Novikov is here, in Venice, with a team of mercenaries. If they’ve made the same discovery as you did, then they won’t hesitate to move on the position.”
The monsignors looked at each other.
Then from Monsignor Calidonna, he said to Kimball, “Then we haven’t much time to waste.”
CHAPTER TEN
St. Mark’s Basilica
St. Mark’s Basilica is located on the eastern end of Saint Mark’s Square and is attached to the Doge’s Palace. The church, which incorporated Romanesque, Middle-Byzantine and Islamic elements, later added Gothic components to complement the mixture of influences. At the time of its construction, the church was built to suggest the republic's wealth and power since the original brick façades and interior walls were embroidered with precious stones and rare marbles. The interior of the vaults, the domes, and the upper walls were covered with mosaics depicting saints, prophets, and biblical scenes made prominent by Renaissance artists that included Titian, Paolo Veronese, Andrea del Castagno, and others. With the massive interiors of the north, south, and east façades and entry halls, the place was colossal. Finding a clue would be as challenging as finding a needle within a haystack that was the size of Manhattan.
Standing before the basilica alongside his unit, Novikov was amazed by the structure’s magnificence that was combined with several other influences. Standing sentinel high above the entryway was a winged lion, the gold image suddenly giving light to the Russian oligarch. He had seen the image many times within the maps of Giovanni da Verrazzano, all crude drawings that appeared to him as a griffin or the Greek horse Pegasus, both from Byzantine mythology which was also part of the basilica’s influences. But the winged lion—it all came to him in a rush. It was the heraldic symbol of Mark the Evangelist, not the creatures of Byzantine mythology which he first considered and then dismissed. Now, the drawings on the map were becoming clear to him, the puzzle beginning to come together.
Closing his eyes, he could see the image with his mind’s eye like a snapshot photo.
Dues nobiscum est
Sequere lucem Leonis alati
And then softly and with his eyes closed while others looked on, he murmured, “Dues nobiscum est. God is with us.” And then: “Sequere lucem Leonis alati. Follow the Light of the Winged Lion.” He opened his eyes. “It was neither a griffin nor Pegasus.” To the others, it appeared that Novikov was speaking to himself.
Stepping inside the basilica that was filled with tourists, Ivan Novikov realized that there was a lot to digest with all the images, statues, and reliefs.
Looking at the domes, he realized that some of the paintings may suggest hints to the treasure’s whereabouts, but that it may have been unlikely since most were created before the Templar wrote his manuscript.
That left the reliefs and statues.
Before entering the basilica, each member of the team was handed a page filled with symbols. The objective was to locate and match the symbol within the basilica to a matching symbol on a page, with the findings to be analyzed.
And just like that, a scavenger hunt was on for one of the grandest treasures in the world.
* * *
St. Mark’s Basilica
Ivan Novikov, if nothing else, was a brilliant man with considerable spatial thinking. He could see images and the hidden meanings behind them, almost as though he was gifted with incredible insight that few others had. Take the writings of Nostradamus, for instance. The Russian oligarch had considered the quatrains to be little more than poetry rather than the visions of a prophet since the passages could be determined in several different ways, especially when it came to fitting the narratives of those who interpreted them. When he read certain segments, he merely scoffed, particularly when the word Hister was taken out of context and ascribed to Hitler, the second anti-Christ, with the misspelling off by one letter and accepted as gospel by the masses that he truly was the anti-Christ as listed. But what the interpreters didn’t take into consideration, however, was that Nostradamus was writing during a time when Hister was a Latin name for the lower course of the Danube and the people who lived along its banks. There’s also the word Ister, which corresponds to the Ancient Greek which also means the Danube or the region around its mouth. How people were so willing to look into the future without looking at history, Novikov thought, people were easily misled. And this quatrain, among others, the oligarch easily debunked by using historical facts to prove inconsistencies within the so-called prophecies of Nostradamus. But the imagery upon the domes and walls of the St. Mark’s Basilica was steeped with fantastic imagery and metaphoric clues. And since interpreting biblical references could also be like analyzing the work of Nostradamus, where the answers usually fit the narrative of the one decoding the verse, it was here that Ivan Novikov had to be careful. Interpreting the findings upon the domes and the mosaics incorrectly, no matter how small the oversight, could throw him off course as to the whereabouts of the treasure.
After more than twenty minutes of fruitless searching, Novikov resorted to his cellphone and brought up cellphone photos he had taken of the Giovanni da Verrazzano maps. Although there were several as he scrolled through the shots, he found the photo he was looking for.
Dues nobiscum est
Sequere lucem Leonis alati
“Dues nobiscum est . . . Dues nobiscum est . . . Dues nobiscum est. God is with us.” He kept repeating the Latin phrase like a mantra. Within those three Latin words was some sort of a key that led to a discovery. “Dues nobiscum est. God is with us.”
Clearly, Novikov was becoming frustrated.
Rabinovitch stepped beside him with the page of symbols in his hand and compared the image on the page with the image on Novikov’s phone. “The Latin phrases and the winged lion, they mean something to you?”
Novikov nodded. “The top phrase means ‘God is with us.’ The bottom phrase means ‘Follow the Light of the Winged Lion.’ The winged lion, of course, is symbolic of Saint Mark.”
“Follow the Light of the Winged Lion,” Rabinovitch said. “The light of a torch, the light of God? What?”
Novikov cocked his head. Perhaps a riddle inside of a riddle, he thought. The word ‘Light’ was capitalized, perhaps in reflection of God’s Light. “Follow the Light of the Winged Lion,” he finally said. “It’s a phrase meaning a . . . beacon perhaps, a pathway. Follow the Beacon of the Winged Lion.” Then Novikov started to race through the photos on his cellphone until he came upon a second figure of the winged lion, though the image was different. This image
٢
Secundus gradus est bis as primum gradum
And then, like a mantra, Novikov said, “Secundus gradus est bis as primum gradum. Secundus gradus est bis as primum gradum. The second step is twice as far as the first step.”
Nothing came to him.
So, he examined the symbol before the winged lion, the backward seven: ٢
Then the bulb of enlightenment went off over his head, that moment of sudden realization. As with the first symbol of ١ that represented the Islamic symbol of the number one, this symbol, the backward seven, was the Islamic number for two. When scrolling further, he found the symbol. It stood as the lone image on the map, a small backward seven that marked the location of the second step. It was the area before the High Altar of the winged lion, the High Altar of St. Mark.
* * *
St. Mark’s Basilica
The High Altar of St. Mark was a magnificent creation with its majestic carvings, bas-reliefs, and golden cupola. It also served as the gateway to the tomb of St. Mark. Novikov, followed by his team who referred to their pages often but appeared far from understanding the gist of what was going on, entered beneath the exquisite carvings of the apostles that stood along the altar’s gateway like a murder of crows.
Looking up at the grand cupola and the gold-layered mosaic image of Immanuel looking down at them, Novikov whispered more to himself, “Sequere lucem Leonis alati. Follow the Light of the Winged Lion.”
“Is that it?” Rabinovitch asked him. “The Light you mentioned?”
“The winged lion is St. Mark, marking his altar” Novikov answered. “And the Light mentioned is not a beacon or actual light, but the Light of Enlightenment.” He pointed at the cupola. “Do you know what that image is?” he asked Rabinovitch.
“I’m guessing Jesus.”
Novikov shook his head. “It’s Immanuel.” And then: “Dues nobiscum est. God is with us. The Latin phrase was above the image of the winged lion, above the tomb of St. Mark. And the Latin phrase below the image, Sequere lucem Leonis alati, Follow the Light of the Winged Lion, tells me that the Light of Enlightenment will be found here, inside this area.” He turned to Rabinovitch. “Have the team fan out and comb the area. Look for symbols inside this altar.”
It took less than two minutes when Vladimir, someone Novikov deemed as a mental dullard, discovered a symbol and writing on a marble plate situated behind the tomb of the altar.
