Passing into the quiet cloisters, they left the bustle of commerce be- hind them and climbed the Michelangelo stairs into the reading room. The sturdy frame that supported Perlmutter's large figure al- lowed more agility than would have seemed possible under the laws of gravity. Still, he was puffing from the exertion of climbing the staircase and gladly agreed when Nocci said that he would fetch his friend. Perlmutter strolled past the rows of carved straight-backed benches, basking in the light that was filtering through the high win- dows as he breathed in the musty odor of antiquity.

Nocci returned after a minute with a handsome middle-aged Woman, whom he introduced as Mara Maggi, the assistant curator.

She had the reddish-blond hair and fair Florentine complexion that showed up so often in Botticelli paintings.

Perlmutter shook her hand. "Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, Signora Maggi."

She greeted Perlmutter with a radiant smile. "Not at all. It is a pleasure to open our collection to someone of such repute. Please come with me. The letter you wish to see is in my office."

She led the way to a space whose window overlooked the cloister garden and settled Perlmutter in a small anteroom that had a spare desk and a couple of chairs. Several pages of wrinkled parchment lay in an open vellum-bound wooden box. She left the two men alone and said to call if they needed any help.

Nocci gingerly lifted the first parchment page from the folder and held it by the edges. "My Spanish is not too bad. If you'll allow me…

Perlmutter nodded and Nocci began to read. As he listened, Perl- mutter decided that he had seldom heard writing that dripped with so much venom and bloodthirsty hatred. The diatribe was a litany of charges directed at the Basques-witchcraft and Satanism among them. Even the uniqueness of their language was used in evidence. Martinez was obviously a madman. But behind his ravings was a clever political message to the young Medici king: To restrict the In- quisition would diminish the power of the throne.

"Ah," Nocci said, adjusting his reading glasses, "here is the pas- sage I was telling you about. Martinez writes:

But it is their tendency to rebellion I fear the most. They are at- tached to relics. They have the Sword, and the Horn, to which they attribute great powers. It gives them the power to rebel. Which will threaten the authority of the church and of your kingdom, my lord.

There is one among them, a man called Aguirrez, who is at the heart of this sedition. I have vowed to pursue him to the ends of the earth, to reclaim these relics. Sire, if our Sacred Mission is not al- lowed to continue its work until heresy is uprooted from the land, I fear the call of Roland's horn will summon our enemies to battle and that his Blade will lay waste to all we hold dear."

"Interesting," Perlmutter said, knitting his brow. "First of all, he seems to be saying that the relics are real. And second, that this fel- low Aguirrez has them in his possession. This certainly backs up the legendary accounts of Roland's fall."

Signora Maggi poked her head in the door and asked if they needed anything. Nocci thanked her and said, "This is a fascinating document. Do you have any more papers authored by this man Mar- tmez.

"I'm very sorry, but there is nothing I can think of."

Perlmutter tented his fingers and said, "Martinez comes across in his writings as a man of great ego. I would be surprised if he did not keep a journal of his day-to-day activities. It would be wonderful if such a book existed and we could get our hands on it. Perhaps at the state archives in Seville."

Signora Maggi was only half-listening. She was reading a sheet of paper that had been tucked into the box with the other records. "This is a list of all the manuscripts in this box. Apparently, one of the doc- uments was taken from this file by a previous curator and sent on to the Venice State Archives."

"What sort of document?" Perlmutter asked.

"It is described here as an 'Exoneration of a Man of the Sea,' writ- ten by an Englishman, Captain Richard Blackthorne. It was sup- posed to be returned, but there are more than ninety kilometers of archives covering a thousand years of history, so sometimes things fall through the cracks, as you Americans say."

"I'd love to read Blackthorne's account," Perlmutter said. "I'm due in Milan tomorrow, but perhaps I can divert to Venice."

"Perhaps it won't be necessary." She took the file into her office, and they could hear the soft clicking of a computer keyboard. She reap- peared after a moment. "I have contacted the Venice State Archives and asked for a virtual search of the records. Once the document is found, it can be copied and transmitted through the Internet."

"Well done!" Perlmutter said. "And my heartfelt thanks."

Signora Maggi kissed Perlmutter on both fleshy cheeks, and be- fore long he and Nocci were driving through the suburbs of Flo- rence. Exhausted by the activities of the day, Perlmutter took a nap and awoke just in time for dinner. He and Nocci dined on the ter- race. He had regained his gustatory equilibrium and had no trouble downing his veal and pasta dishes. After finishing up with a spinach salad and a simple doici of fresh fruit, they watched the sun go down, silently sipping on glasses oflimoncello.

The phone rang and Nocci went to answer it, while Perlmutter sat in the dark, savoring the smell of earth and grapevines, carried to his tulip nose by a light evening breeze. Nocci appeared a few minutes later and summoned Perlmutter into a small state-of-the-art com- puter room.

Noting his guest's upraised eyebrow, Nocci said, "Even a business as small as mine must use the latest in communications in order to survive in the global market. That was Signora Maggi," he said, sit- ting down in front of the monitor. "She apologizes for the delay, but the document you requested had to be retrieved from the Museo Storico Navale, the naval museum, where it had been languishing. Here," he said, and rose to give up his seat.

The sturdy wooden chair creaked in protest when Perlmutter set- tied in. He scanned the title page, on which the author declared the iournal to be "an account of an unwilling mercenary in the service of the Spanish Inquisition."

Perlmutter leaned forward, stared into the screen and began to read the words that had been written five centuries before.

THE BEER TRUCK rounded a sharp curve, and the driver slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting the battered wreck in the road. The car that lay on its side a few yards from the edge looked as if it had been dropped from a great height. Two more wrecks smoldered at the bottom of the drop-off hundreds of feet below. The driver hurried from his truck and peered into the car window. He was surprised to discover that the people inside were still alive.

The trucker called for help on his CB radio. The rescue crew had to use mechanical jaws to extricate the Trouts, and then the couple was taken to a small but well-equipped hospital. Paul suffered from a broken wrist, Gamay had a concussion, and they were both covered with bumps and bruises. They spent the night under observation, went through another exam the next morning and were pronounced fit to go. They were signing out at the front desk, when two men wearing rumpled suits arrived, identified themselves as provincial police and asked to talk with them.

They settled into an unoccupied visitors' lounge, and the Trouts were asked to tell what happened. The senior man was named Mac- Farlane. In a classic good-cop, bad-cop pairing, he was the friendly one who tut-tutted, while his partner, a man named Duffy, was the belligerent officer who tried to pick holes in their story.