The Tower by Valerio Massimo Manfredi Read Free Book Online

know. Not yet. The Jesuits have raised a wall of silence. There’s something very strange about all this. Confound it, Hogan, you’re a Jesuit. It’s your order! Find out what they have to hide! And find out where Antonelli is. We absolutely must speak to him before it’s too late.’
    ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Father Hogan, ‘but I can’t promise anything.’
    He left the room and retraced his steps to the library’s reading room and then back to his office. He went in and closed the door swiftly behind him as if he were afraid of being followed. He felt as though he had just returned from hell.

    P HILIP G ARRETT met Giorgio Liverani in a café on Vicolo Divino Amore, where the Italian scholar was renting a small house. Philip was so pleased to hear that his friend had managed to arrange a meeting with the director that he gratefully accepted an invitation to dinner at Giorgio’s place that evening.
    ‘Let me tell you,’ began Liverani, after having ordered gelato for both of them, ‘Boni, who’s usually such a cantankerous old character, didn’t object in the least. As soon as I told him who you were, he seemed very keen to meet you. He’ll see you this afternoon at five in his study on Via Mura Leonine.’
    ‘Giorgio, I don’t know how . . .’
    ‘Oh, come on now, I’ve done nothing at all. And good heavens, I’m really pleased to have met up with you again! I wish you could stay a while. You have no idea how I miss the old days in Paris. You will let me know how things go with Father Boni?’
    ‘You bet,’ said Philip. ‘Tonight, dinner at your house. I’ll tell you everything.’

    F ATHER B ONI ’ S STUDY was very simple and austere, lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases full of bound manuscripts and extracts from scientific journals. Behind the priest’s desk, in the only space free of bookshelves, hung portraits of Galileo Galilei and Bonaventura Cavalieri.
    His desk was oddly uncluttered and tidy. A few volumes to his right were ordered by decreasing size. A folder of Moroccan leather lay before him with a finely wrought seventeenth-century stiletto on top – ostensibly a paper cutter, it was shiny and sharp, as though it could well be put to another use. A calculating machine, jewel of the most modern technology, sat on his left, along with a slide-rule.
    ‘If I believed in telepathy,’ the priest began after asking Philip to sit down, ‘I would say that I had been expecting your visit, although we’ve never had the pleasure of meeting.’
    ‘Is that so?’ said Philip. ‘I’m happy, then, because you’re the only person in the world who can help me right now.’
    ‘I’ll be glad to do so if I can,’ said Father Boni. ‘Tell me, please, what is it you need?’
    ‘As you may know, my father, the anthropologist Desmond Garrett, disappeared in the south-eastern quadrant of the Sahara desert ten years ago without leaving any trace. An officer of the Foreign Legion recently contacted me and passed on what may be a sign from my father in the form of a coded message. In ten years, I’ve been up any number of blind alleys trying to search for him, but this time I’m convinced I’m on the right track.
    ‘I’ve learned that shortly before he vanished, he spent some time here in Rome and met with a man who may have been very important for his research: the director of the Vatican Library, a Jesuit named Giuseppe Antonelli. I contacted the Curia Generalizia to learn what I could about him, but the answers I received were rather evasive. Since you are his successor at the library, I was wondering if you could give me any information about this man and perhaps tell me how I can find him. It’s vitally important to me, as I’m sure you will understand.’
    Father Boni widened his arms. ‘Father Antonelli left his job a year ago due to ill health. I’m afraid I never met him.’ Philip lowered his head in disappointment but the priest quickly began speaking again, as if