The journey of Francis of Assisi, as a poet, as a minister, and as a lay evangelist, Rivera stressed, was one of attempted reconciliation between Islam and Christianity. For that reason, St. Francis was revered in the Islamic world for many centuries up until and including modern times. “By scholars of both religions,” Rivera concluded, “he is often seen as an architect for interfaith dialogues.”

“St. Francis was also an accomplished poet in his own right,” Alex said, recalling. “When I studied Italian in Rome many years ago we read ‘The Canticle of the Sun’ and ‘The Canticle of the Creatures.’ The poetry was dense since it was Italian from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.”

“Thank you,” Rivera said good naturedly. “What a wonderfully overeducated bunch of detectives I have here. It’s refreshing.”

“Well, I did my Renaissance studies too,” Rizzo said. “My only further comment is that Saint Tom had a more benevolent view of the ragheads than that scoundrel Dante Alighieri, whose The Divine Comedy placed Muhammad in hell with his entrails hanging out. Justifiably to modern readers, I might add.”

There was laughter around the small circle of five.

“That may be more than what we need to know, Senor Rizzo,” Rivera answered with a sly smile. “But I mention all this because in contemporary accounts of the burial of St. Francis in 1226, there is an account that a friend placed a ‘lamentation’ in St. Francis’s tomb with him. No one knows exactly why, but perhaps it was because Francis was the first known person to manifest the ‘stigmata,’ the wounds borne by Christ from the crucifixion. So a ‘lamentation’ would be a logical item to accompany Francis to the grave. And, as The Pietà of Malta has an Arabic inscription, and as St. Francis’s tomb has been disturbed at least three times over the centuries, there is further conjecture-no proof, mind you, but further conjecture-that it was this piece that actually went into the ground with St. Francis. Hence, perhaps, its mystique. Hence, the notion that a certain supernatural aura is attached to it, one that transcends an earthly grave. After all,” Rivera concluded, “it is very possible that this particular piece went into the earth with a saint and then returned to the living world.”

The laughter by now had dissolved. Alex felt a little chill.

Into the grave and out of it. What had she gotten into? Yet she also noted the link to the Islamic world.

“Resurrection. Eternal life. The property of a noteworthy and revered saint, and a link to the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. All part of the equation here, my friends,” Rivera said. “All part of the unique aspects of The Pietà of Malta. So when you ask about qualities that set it apart from any other object in the museum, and perhaps even the world…to my mind? I have just told you.”

His voice trailed off.

“Well?” the curator finally added in conclusion. “Need I say more?”

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 9, AFTERNOON

Jean-Claude stood at the intersection of the Calle de Maldonado and the Calle de Claudio Coello. He studied the street. In front of him was an upscale residential neighborhood, behind him more of the same. There was also a public square, trees, and traffic.

It was almost 3:00 p.m. There were more pedestrians than he could count, a steady bustle. Well, he reasoned, within crowds there was always anonymity as well as danger.

His eyes settled on the green-and-white face of a Starbuck’s coffee shop that had recently opened. For a moment, he was filled with rage. Was all of Europe going to be Americanized? Was the entire world? He stifled his rage, knowing he would have his day of reckoning within the next week or two. Out of force of habit, he adjusted the long sweatshirt that he wore. Under it was a small pistol, low caliber, Italian-made.

He walked south twenty meters until he came to the doorway of a small three-story building. There was an art gallery on the first floor and apartments above.

He pressed the door code. A buzzer sounded and a big door creaked open.

Jean-Claude stepped into the building. There were two men in the corridor, his accomplices, Samy and Mahoud. They waited on the main floor, a corridor that led up to expensive apartments but also to a small portal that led to the utility closest where the trash was assembled.

The two men stared at him. Then Samy nodded. Jean-Claude moved forward and Mahoud led him to the stairs that went to the basement. On the way down, they both picked up powerful battery-powered flashlights.

The basement was damp and dark, with spider webs, scattered pieces of garbage, and broken bottles. It stank of mildew and smelled of rats. They crossed the old floor. There were things left over from an exterminator’s kit.

“Aquí!” said Mahoud. Here!

Mahoud led Jean-Claude across the floor to an old stone wall.

“How old is the wall?” Jean-Claude asked.

The friend shrugged. How old was the foundation of European cities? From the time of James II? From the time of Torquemada? Mahoud shrugged. What difference did it make?

Mahoud had worked construction for much of his teen years back in the Middle East. He was powerfully built, which was one reason he had been recruited. He put his strong hands upon some stones and the stones started to move. The rocks were old and clammy and heavy, but they fit together in the wall like a Rubik’s cube of masonry.

Jean-Claude watched intently, then lent a hand himself. They removed a dozen rocks from the wall, then another dozen. Gradually a hole emerged at waist level, a hole big enough for a man to pull himself through.

Jean-Claude and Mahoud kept moving stones. After a few minutes, both men had broken a sweat. But the hole was four-by-four.

“Enough,” Mahoud said. “Come with me.”

Mahoud lifted himself up and pulled himself through. With a short jump, he landed on dirt on the other side. He turned and extended a hand as Jean-Claude came through the hole in the wall after him. They were now on a winding path that would lead them under the city.

With their torches casting long yellow beams in front of them, they hunched their shoulders low and followed a bizarre underground passageway that wove around and between the basements and sub-basements of the buildings on the street above them. Mahoud knew the route because he had discovered it himself, tipped off by another Spaniard born in the Middle East who bore no liking for the American presence in Spain.

The pathway was dirt, at times very narrow, at other times heavily strewn with the debris of many years. Rumors had it that some of these passageways dated all the way back to the Inquisition of the 1400s. Other rumors maintained that the passages had been active in the Civil War of the thirties, controlled largely by anti-Franco Republican forces who would emerge to the streets, take potshots at Franco’s soldiers, and disappear again during the final treacherous endgame at the fall of Madrid. But there were an equal number of stories about brutal subterranean ambushes by Franquistas.

Jean-Claude and Mahoud moved quickly. Above them, they could hear the distant rumblings of the city. They could smell the sewer. At times, they passed directly under thick floorboards of houses and shops and could even hear muffled voices.

Then eventually, they reached a dead end, or appeared to.

“This,” said Mahoud, “is the difficult part. My friend, if you’re claustrophobic…”

“I’m not…”

“Then we continue,” he said. “It’s about thirty meters. It’s filthy and it’s a crawl.”

Mahoud went to his knees and loosened about twenty bricks from the base of the wall. Mahoud pulled them out and built them into a neat pile.