Bravo turned and, together with Jenny, began to walk away.

"Braverman Shaw," Father Mosto called from behind them. "You are perhaps not so familiar with the traditions of the Order. Females have no place in-"

He watched them continue moving away from him, and when he spoke again, there was a plaintive note to his voice. "Don't do this, I beg of you. It is against our ancient traditions."

Bravo turned. "Then perhaps it's time you reconsidered what is tradition and what is rote, what is useful and what never should have been."

The priest's face was dark as soot and he rocked a little on his feet, which were as tiny as a girl's. "This is monstrous. I won't stand for it. You are extorting-"

"I'm extorting nothing," Bravo said calmly. "I'm merely suggesting another way of approaching a situation, just as my father would have done if he was standing here in my place."

Father Mosto scrubbed his beard with his curled fingers, his venomous eyes on Jenny.

"Where is your vaunted Christian compassion, Father Mosto?" she said.

Bravo started, certain that she'd upset the delicate balance he'd so carefully created. But then he looked into the priest's face and noticed a subtle softening. Like anyone else, he was not immune to flattery. Too, she had judged the right psychological moment to speak up. Father Mosto saw that she wasn't as compliant or as foolish as he had supposed. Bravo understood, then, just how clever Jenny was. She had been following every nuance of the conversation and knew precisely when the priest was on the cusp of acquiescing. All that had been remaining was an affirmation from her, proving Bravo's position.

An expression, perhaps of resignation, settled on Father Mosto's face. "Come with me, both of you," he said gruffly, and he led them through a thickly painted doorway at the back of the church that was, in fact, part of a panel painting. It was so small that Bravo had to duck his head.

They found themselves in a downward sloping corridor that must have been running alongside a canal because the farther they went, the damper it became. Here and there, water was seeping through the immense stone blocks. A door appeared to their left, just before the corridor reached its lowest ebb. Here there was a metal drain set into the stone from which a sewer reek now and again wafted.

Father Mosto unlocked the door to the rectory and, opening the thick iron-clad wood door, made to step over the threshold. Jenny, however, was looking down the corridor.

"What's beyond there?" she said.

When it became clear he wasn't going to acknowledge the question, Bravo repeated it.

"Santa Marina Maggiore." The priest addressed Bravo through pursed lips.

"The nunnery," Jenny said.

"No one is allowed in there," Father Mosto said.

When Jenny entered he was already behind his desk, a rather ornate wooden affair for a priest. One wall was taken up by a massive oak cabinet, its carved doors chained and padlocked. The only other pieces of furniture were a pair of uncomfortable-looking spindle-back chairs of a wood that was almost black. Above his head hung a carving of Jesus on the Cross. Owing to its lack of windows, the room, which smelled of resin and incense, was claustrophobic.

"I'm afraid I have bad news to impart," he said. "The pope's health has declined precipitously."

"Then I have less time than I had thought," Bravo said.

"Indeed. With the full backing of the Vatican cabal behind them, the Knights have the upper hand now, of that there can be no doubt." He clawed at his beard again. "You see why I was so distraught when you decided to walk away. You're the Order's only hope. Safeguarding our secrets is what will save us. The secrets are our power, our future-they are the Order itself. Without them, we will cease to exist, our contacts will vanish, and the Knights of St. Clement will run rampant." He grimaced. "You see the irony of the situation. We barter the secrets in order to do our work, but also to defend ourselves. Until you find the cache, we are powerless to use our contacts to help us fend off the Knights."

"There is something you must explain to me," Bravo said. "Jenny has assured me that the Order is secular now-apostate-and has been for some time. Yet here we are speaking to a priest, not a businessman or a government official like my father."

Father Mosto nodded. "It is due entirely to your father. While others in the Haute Cour moved away from the religious side of the Order, your father did not. It was he who kept our centuries-old network alive and flourishing."

"You mean he had secrets even from the Haute Cour."

"Your father was correct when he argued for the reinstatement of a Magister Regens. He looked at a wider field, saw a higher level that he urgently felt should be the Order's mission."

"What was it my father wanted the Order to do?"

"Alas, I have no idea. He didn't tell me, and my contacts with the rest of the Haute Cour are, as you can imagine, nonexistent."

Bravo nodded. "I wish my father was here. Now the Order is under attack from inside was well as from outside."

"The traitor, yes. The members of the Order realize the errors their leaders have made."

"Too late for my father."

"Ah, my son, we all owe Dexter an enormous debt. About the future he was positively prescient." Father Mosto put his hand on Bravo's shoulder. "The Order may be in disarray, Braverman, but if you can fulfill your father's mission, if we can survive this terrible crisis, I feel certain that at long last true change can be effected." He gestured. "But I am forgetting my manners. Please sit down."

The chairs were as uncomfortable as they looked. Bravo and Jenny settled themselves as best they could. Through his anger, his assessment of the new information, Bravo did not lose sight of his mission. He made a mental note to call Emma at the earliest opportunity. Maybe she'd gotten a lead on the mole, but as soon as he thought it he knew he was whistling in the dark. Surely his sister would have called him if she'd made even the slightest progress.

The priest spread his hands. "I suppose you've been told that the Order came here because there was no love lost between Venice and Rome, and that's true, so far as it goes." He sat forward, his fingers steepled. "There was, however, another, far more compelling reason. To understand it, we must go all the way back to 1095, when the call went out for the first Crusade.

"Venice is remembered almost solely as a city-state of superb politicians, and that's true-again, so far as it goes. 'Keep safe from stormy weather, O Lord, all your faithful mariners, safe from sudden shipwreck and from evil, unsuspected tricks of cunning enemies.'" His forefinger wagged back and forth. "Cunning enemies, you see? Even then. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"The prayer I just recited is recorded in the earliest histories of La Serenissima, spoken on the Day of Ascension when the doges of Venice were married to the sea. Because the Venetians were, first and foremost, a seafaring people.

"When the call went out from Rome for able swords to travel to the Holy Land, you would think that those who responded were of a religious bent, wanting to earn their way into the next life. But no, only a handful were soldiers of the Lord; the vast majority of those who took up arms to fight for Rome were opportunists who saw in the wholesale slaughter to come the chance to carve out for themselves fiefdoms, states, even empires in the Levant, as the Middle East was then called."

He raised a hand. "I am well aware that both of you are familiar with this era, but I beg you to indulge me for a few moments."

He rose and came around to stand in front of Bravo and Jenny. It was clear that he was at his most comfortable lecturing. Both his manner and his speech were distinctly old-fashioned, as if he had come from centuries past.