The Medici Secret

Chapter 21

Toronto Airport, present day Luc Founder's phone rang as he descended from the Gulfstream G500.

'This is the second failure.' The heavily accented voice was immediately recognisable. 'You will understand my colleagues are upset.' Founder said nothing.

'You have twenty-four hours. If you do not meet your obligations our relationship will be terminated. Is that clear?'

'Perfectly,' Fournier responded coldly. 'But please don't ever threaten me again. In forty-five years I have never once failed to deliver. I will not fail you… unless, that is, I choose to.' The laboratory was a single storey concrete edifice hidden from the main road by a copse of trees. Behind it stretched snow-covered fields. The nearest houses stood over half a mile from the building, and even these were owned by Canadian Grain Supplies, one of Luc Fournier's many anonymous companies that acted as a front to his real business.

The limo pulled up outside the main building and the driver ran around to open the rear door and to hold an umbrella aloft, shielding Fournier from the few flakes of snow that descended from the grey sky. It was minus 5 degrees centigrade and the men's breath billowed into the crisp cold air.

Fournier was met at the door by the head of the lab team, Dr Jerome Fritus. With barely a nod in greeting he led his employer along a corridor to the central rooms of the laboratory complex. Fritus was not one for small talk and he knew Fournier did not like unnecessary conversation.

The main room in the complex was white-walled and sterile, an environment that perfectly reflected the barren isolation of the frozen fields and the snow-laden sky outside. Fritus led the way to a wide counter upon which stood a cubic glass container. Inside this lay the tablet stolen from the Medici Chapel.

In that moment, all Fournier's concerns and frustrations evaporated. Nothing else mattered, Afghan terrorists included. He was in the presence of a timeless wonder, something bigger than all of them.

'I have your initial report on the inscription' Fournier said, 'but what else have you discovered?'

Fritus stood with his hands clasped behind his back and stared at Fournier. Unlike any other of Founder's many employees he seemed to have no fear of his employer. Fournier found this refreshing, but as soon as Fritus's usefulness had passed he would be quietly eliminated.

'It is a perfectly proportioned rectangle 3.9 by 1.9 centimetres,' Fritus replied. 'The inscription must have appeared on the surface only after the stone had been hydrated by water vapour in the air. The green writing is made from a sulphurous compound that changes colour when water molecules are incorporated into its crystalline structure.' 'And you've managed to date it?'

'Carbon dating is of course impossible as the tablet is made from inorganic materials. However, I have been able to come up with a pretty accurate age using a new comparative analysis technique. The tablet is made from Amanorthosite, a form of what's called intrusive igneous rock, characterised by the presence of small amounts of the mineral, letomenite. Letomenite changes its chemical structure when it comes into contact with air. This means we can compare the amount of change in this compound on the edges of the Medici tablet with material inside the tablet. This will tell us when the piece of stone was first cut into its present shape.'

Fournier was suitably impressed. 'But surely, all the time it was inside the body in the chapel the stone was sealed from the air.'

'Correct,' Fritus replied as though he were talking to a keen student. 'But there was air in the body when it was buried and molecules of oxygen would have been able to seep into the corpse. The lettering on the tablet only appeared after the tablet was exposed to the air because it needed water vapour which could not have been able to find its way past the embalming fluid around the object.' 'So are the dates right? Is the tablet genuine?'

'By my calculations the stone of the tablet was first cut and exposed to the air between 500 and 600 years ago. I can't be any more accurate than that.'

'You don't need to be,' Fournier replied. 'It's enough to confirm the tablet is not modern. What else have you discovered?'

'How do you know there is more, Monsieur Fournier?' Fournier raised an eyebrow.

Fritus didn't need any more encouragement 'I found something very strange. Trace amounts of a chemical called Ropractin.' 'Which is?'

'Metapropyl dimethylphosphonochloridite, if that helps. It's a close relative of Sarin, but much deadlier. At room temperature it is a liquid, intensely green in colour, semi-fluorescent. It's about a thousand times more poisonous than Sarin, deadly in concentrations of a tiny fraction of a milligram per kilogram of body weight'

Fournier had stopped listening. After all these years, finally he understood the central mystery of Niccoli's written account of his journey to Macedonia. He knew now what the Medici Secret was.