The Venice conspiracy

CHAPTER 72

Carabinieri HQ, Venice Sickness, holidays and a family emergency in the cryptanalysis department in Rome mean Vito and Valentina have to wait overnight to get their code broken.

Valentina enters her boss's office with a sheet of A4 and a smile on her face as broad as the dome of San Marco's. 'It's so simple. So stupidly simple!' she moves to Vito's side of the desk and energetically slaps the paper down. 'It says Venice.'

'Venice?' He stares at the line of numerals – XXIV-VII-XVI-XI-V-VII

'How does it say Venice?'

'Look!' says Valentina, excitedly. 'V equals XXIV. E equals VII. N equals XVI. I equals XI. C equals V. Then we have the E again, VII.' Valentina almost breaks out laughing.

'Oh, so amazingly simple,' mocks Vito. 'Now why on earth didn't I get that straight away?'

'Okay, not that simple,' admits Valentina. 'Well, not to us, but it did make the cryptanalysts laugh.'

'Laughter in the crypt. I'm so glad.'

'Ha ha, very funny. Apparently it's a crude variation of the Caesar Cipher.'

'Caesar?'

'Yes, all the way back to old Julius himself. Apparently he used to write battle messages in a simple code whereby the letter he put down was represented by a different letter or number. The letter A, for example, would be represented by a C – that would be a two-shift cipher.'

Vito runs a finger across the code and the translation made by the analysts. 'But these aren't letters, they're numerals.'

'I know,' says Valentina. 'Bale has put his own twist on it. He's given each letter its numeric equivalent in the alphabet then applied the classic Caesar cipher of two, so A is not represented by a 1, it's represented by a 3, then he's converted the 3 into the Roman numeral III.'

Vito now appreciates its simplicity. 'And E itself is not a 5, it's 5 plus 2, which in Roman numerals equals VII.'

'Exactly.'

A rap on the door turns their heads.

Nuncio di Alberto enters, looking almost as pleased as Valentina has been. 'Mario Fabianelli may well have been telling the truth – it's possible that he doesn't know anything about that company of his in the Cayman Islands, or the purchase of the artefact.'

'How so?' asks Vito.

'Well, the forgery of his name on the company documents is very good – but just not good enough. Handwriting experts have now examined it and compared it to samples of documents we took from the billionaire's home. It doesn't match.'

'It doesn't? They're sure?'

'Positive. And there's more. While Fabianelli didn't know about the company or the purchase, his PA certainly did.' Nuncio flashes his own piece of paper. 'This is a copy of the insurance Mera Teale took out on the artefact, to the value of two million dollars. Teale always signed for insurance cover on all Mario's art, so there was no need for her to forge anything. In fact, in this case, it would look peculiar if anyone but her had signed.'

'Bene. This is real progress, but we still have no sightings of her, the lawyer Ancelotti or Tom.' Vito looks hopefully at Nuncio.

'I have heard nothing new. Rocco and Francesca told me they'd checked again with the Polizia – nothing there either.'

'Tom can't have just vanished from the earth,' says Valentina.

'He can,' says Vito ominously, 'if he's already dead.'