The Alchemist’s Code (30 page)

Benjamin Grazer, Oscar's friend who worked at NATO, had called shortly after our first visit to Villa Gondemar.

“Oscar,
amico mio
, I've got some names for you. But that's it.”

“Anything, Ben.”

“Then, note these down: Lorenzo Alessandro Aragona, Nathan Keller, Lev Nemiroff, Henri von Tschoudy, François David, Kirk McCourt, Vladimir Afanas'evič Glyz, Aram Nazariantz, Sean Bruce.”

Oscar had written the names quickly, then, coming to the last, he had opened his eyes wide. “Did you say Sean Bruce?”

“Yes. They are the last members of Group 9 that we know anything about.

At least half of them were assassinated in mysterious circumstances,” Grazer said. “Be careful, Oscar, this is a dangerous business,” he added.

After a few moments the same tremulous voice of a few hours earlier answered the intercom. “Hello?”

“Police, open up please,” Oscar said, his voice firm but polite.

There was a moment of silence, then the metallic voice returned through the intercom, this time with an audible hint of concern.

“I'm afraid the father superior is not here—”

“Never mind, you can help me. Open up, please, it's urgent,” Oscar replied.

The gate opened and within seconds we found ourselves in front of a young seminarian with an olive complexion. “Please.”

“I'm Commissioner Franchi, we were here a few hours ago and spoke to Father Luigi. I have reason to believe that one of your guests, Signor Giovanni, has some important information for a delicate investigation I'm conducting. I'd like to speak to him for a few minutes,” Oscar said, politely but firmly.

“But Commissioner… I'm on my own here right now, Father Luigi is away and I don't know if—”

“It's extremely important – Father Luigi will understand,” Oscar insisted.

The young seminarian hesitated, then gave in. “This way.”

“Thank you.”

We knocked on the old man's door, but no one answered and so we discreetly made our way in. There he was, sitting in his wheelchair staring out of the window, with his back to the entrance.

“Signor Giovanni, there are some people here to see you,” the seminarian said kindly as we walked over to him.

I stepped forward. “I'm Lorenzo, Signor Giovanni, the grandson of your friend, Alessandro Lorenzo Aragona.”

The old man turned to the right, looked at me with those watery eyes and his lips parted in a tender, toothless smile.

I smiled back, and showed him the postcard he had sent to Navarro. “Did you send this to Antonio Navarro, Sean? You are Sean Bruce, right? A member of the Lodge of the Nine.”

The old man didn't answer, but glanced past me and pointed a skeletal finger at the wardrobe.

“Do you want me to take something from the wardrobe?” I asked as I approached the two door piece of furniture to which the old man was pointing.

He nodded, but as soon as he realized that there were other people in the room, he stiffened.

“No!”

I froze.

“He only wanted you to have them!”

I invited Navarro to come closer. “Mr Giovanni, this is Antonio Navarro, a close friend of my grandfather, you sent him the postcard of villa Gondemar. Why?”

“My name isn't Giovanni,” the sweet old man said, smiling again, “my name is Sean, Sean Bruce.” Then he squinted to focus on the face of Navarro, who stood motionless, as taut as a bow string. The Spaniard nodded imperceptibly and Sean's eyes opened wide again.

“Everybody out except him,” he said, resolutely pointing to me.

Oscar looked at me. “All right, Mr Bruce, we're going, don't worry.”

Once alone, the old man encouraged me with a nod of his head.

I opened the right hand door of the wardrobe and started digging through his clothes and few belongings.

“What am I looking for?”

The old man chuckled. “My water bottle”

I looked at him for a moment, convinced that this was a waste of time. The old man didn't seem all there. I moved the clothes aside and found an old canteen bottle from the Second World War. I turned round and saw the old man right behind me. With a delicate gesture, he grabbed it from my hands and pulled off the bottom, which was actually a kind of oval container. There were four Chaldean keys inside. On each was the radial wheel, the symbol of the Lodge of the Nine. There was also another little sheet of metal which was exactly like the Cardan grilles I had already seen.

Old Sean smiled again, but this time it was the look of a man who was totally lucid. “When you are standing before it, the sequence will come into your mind.”

I looked at the contents of the box first, then at the old man.

“Sean… I no longer have the object that triggers the memories of the sequence, nor Vladimir's book. I have nothing… And, from the little I know, four keys are not enough.”

Sean, still smiling, shook his head. “That object was only used to awaken your awareness. The idol itself will open your mind. Everything will soon be re-united, you'll see.”

As I stood there watching him, a sudden shadow of sadness darkened his face.

“But, my boy, when you have everything at your disposal, don't use it. Leave alone what shouldn't be evoked, don't make the same mistake your grandfather and I made.”

Old Sean wasn't crazy at all, he was only pretending.

“What do you mean?” I asked confused.

He shook his head, looking as though he was about to cry, stared silently into space for a moment as though seeing something over my shoulder, perhaps images of the past, and then turned his watery eyes onto me again.

“We evoked him, young Aragona. His power is… unimaginable. If you're not strong enough to control it, it can destroy you, all those around you and all those who stand in his way. One look is enough for him to petrify you with terror.”

I swallowed with difficulty, but didn't want to give up. I looked at the keys first, and then at the old man. “Sean, if this…
thing
can save my wife's life, I have to find it, to use it.”

The old man shook his head again, then opened his eyes and began to describe events from a seemingly inconclusive story.

“Berlin, 1945, we've got the idol, we're on the run! The others sleep, the three of us, Alex Aragona, Vladimir Glyz and me, keep watch. Alex is still in shock from the death of Nathan, our chief, who before his death had passed onto him a heavy burden.

'I am the new Chosen One of the Nine, I know the whole sequence, I can evoke him!' he says with wild eyes. 'We mustn't do it, Alex!' we answer. But he seems possessed, and looks avidly at the casket. Vladimir and I don't know what to do, so we decide to wake up our brothers.

Everyone looks in amazement at Alex, who is now much calmer. His words touch everyone deeply. 'Brothers, we can make him stop the war! The Guardian of the Threshold can stop this carnage'. The war, oh yes, we've seen the war – its atrocities have left their mark on all of us. Hitler seems defeated now, but the world is still shocked, the battles continue. We talk, some of us refuse resolutely. Then we put the decision to the vote. Alex wants to use it for good, and convinces us to help him.

We evoke the Guardian of the Threshold.”

And at this point, the old man starts screaming, attracting the attention of the young seminarian, Oscar and Navarro, who, frightened, rush into the room.

“Oh my God! It's horrible, horrible!” Sean said. “Like watching a cold, black shroud take shape! He's black, blacker than pitch darkness! He walks without touching the ground, crawls like a dark snake, the air smells of death all around, the stars go out and all sound ceases. And his eyes! His eyes are blazing, staring at you, and as they do, you feel a chill flowing through your veins like some kind of viscous liquid. Absolute fear. The deepest horror. We try to control ourselves – after all, that's why we were chosen, we are the Lodge of the Nine, founded by the Templars. He doesn't do anything, just looks at us and that is enough to put the fear of God into us. But we stand up to him, we stay strong and in the end we manage to dominate him.

We asked him to put an end to that war at any cost. But he fulfilled our wish in his own way, with the malice typical of the devil.”

Sean paused again, breathing heavily. He lowered his head and looked at the floor.

“Now it's over, that monstrous thing is still standing there in front of us and we only have to lock him in his millennial prison. However, Alex allows himself to be dominated by his fiery eyes and the Guardian of the Threshold seizes the advantage. 'Don't you ask anything for yourselves, guardians?'

'No, no, no, Alex don't give in!' But he's lost, captured by the evil charm of that monster. 'I want eternal life and knowledge for me and my comrades'. And once again, he fulfils the wish – once again in his own way. And in the end, we lock him up again in his eternal prison.”

His delirious account stopped suddenly, as though he had awakened. Oscar and the others were standing in the doorway, out of sight of the old man. Navarro's face was a mask of anguish.

“We evoked him, young Aragona,” added Sean in tears, “and we asked him for eternal life and knowledge, supreme knowledge. We got it, do you understand? But we lost everything else. We managed to tame his power that day, but because we looked into his eyes we've spent our long lives tormented by unspeakable nightmares, powerless before the death of our loved ones, with our minds prey to a lucid madness, getting inexorably older but without being able to die, unless we are killed, like our other brothers, or commit suicide. I've never had the courage to do it myself. Your grandfather made the ultimate decision. He poisoned himself, right here, within the walls of villa Gondemar. But no one except me, has ever known it. The missionaries found him dead in his bed. He left a note on the bedside table: 'Hope will rise again.' It was signed 'Anastasio Elpìda'. Father Luigi decided to bury him in the community cemetery and erected a tombstone following the instructions your grandfather himself had left in his very short will.”

I tried to imagine what anguish my grandfather must have experienced and how much he must have suffered.

Navarro staggered and Oscar held him up. “I need to splash some water on my face,” he whispered, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

Silently, Oscar motioned to the seminarian to show Navarro to the bathroom.

Sean shook his head. “Your grandfather was devastated by that experience in 1945, as were we all. After seeing what that object was capable of, we decided to hide it. We would say that the idol had been destroyed. We agreed also to hide the sequence that activated the mechanism in the minds of our descendants or trustworthy people, so that it would almost be impossible to evoke that creature again.

Your grandfather himself taught us all how to insert the symbol in the deepest recesses of others' minds, and link it to an object that could bring back the memory. However, he grafted the entire sequence into you alone. So that you would be the only one to keep the secret, but you would avoid making the same mistake that we made.”

I listened to that long and disturbing story in silence.

Then I looked at the keys and, despite the warning words of the old man, my eyes sparkled with renewed, insane confidence in that miraculous remedy.

Sean noticed and looked defeated. “If you really want to evoke him, though, I can't stop you. I swore to your grandfather that I'd hand over to you the keys he had entrusted to me before he died. The agreement was that if any of us died, their key would be sent by a notary to a secret address where your grandfather could recover it. We only managed to get two keys. If you can find the other five, you'll be able to evoke the Guardian of the Threshold.”

He handed me the tin casket and shut himself up in a sad silence.

I waited another moment, then I asked him the last, crucial question. “Where is the Baphomet, Sean?”

Sean looked at me and smiled again as he had done at first, with the expression typical of one who hears but doesn't understand. Like a madman.

“The Baphomet… Yes, I saw it… a long time ago. Who knows what happened? The Russian man, the Russian man undertook to hide it, together with the priest. Yes, the priest must know where it is.”

He turned to the window and said no more.

The map was complete, and so was the reconstruction of the events, but it still lacked the final clue that perhaps this mysterious priest could provide me. I turned towards the door to exchange views with Oscar and Navarro.

“Where is Antonio?”

Oscar turned round suddenly, convinced that the Spaniard had returned from the toilet. Seeing that he wasn't there, he went into the hallway and found the seminarian. “Where is the man who was with us?”

The young man pursed his lips. “I showed him to the toilet and… He hasn't come out yet.”

“Show me where it is,” Oscar said.

We left Sean in his silence and followed the seminarian to the toilet.

“Mr Navarro, are you okay? Mr Navarro!”

Silence.

“Mr Navarro!”

Oscar tried to open the door but it was locked from the inside. He walked a few steps back and violently rammed it open with his shoulder.

The small toilet was empty, and the window was open. We looked into the garden. We were on the ground floor and it would have been easy enough to jump out.

“Unbelievable – he's sneaked off, but why?” Oscar asked, confused.

We were given no time to come up with an answer, however, because at that moment his phone rang.

And the apocalypse began.

Reconstruction based on the testimony of Anna Nikitovna Glyz

Rome, January 2013

When Woland's men gently removed the metal cube from the case, it was immediately clear to them that something was wrong. They turned to look at their leader and hesitated.